saying that he was a co- conspirator under the espionage act. in other words, he may have been violating the espionage act and be a criminal. he was acting as a journalist. as i said, we do not think people should be prosecuted for committing journalism. given the degree of what they went after and how they tracked him, meetings he had, etc., i think there was more searching and a deeper investigation into his particular activities. in that sense, it was more troubling. both cases raise substantial you are pointing to the importance of a free press and the role of the press, yet the economics of the news business are going in the other

direction with less money to spend on investigative projects. what is ahead? >> it has become more difficult of newsthe economics --hering has become more traditional media has less resources to devote to important news gathering. that is the reality. but i can't tell you that the work remains excellent, and there are still thousands of high-qualityoing work throughout the united washington. here in and so, while i think it is a concern, it is of greater where locallly newspapers and tv stations and radio stations may have fewer resources available to cover local news, to cover local

issues, to have investigative reporting locally. that is the bigger issue than nationally. there is still a strong robust reporting going on in the nation's capital, but it is a thatrn, and i am hopeful as traditional media builds it digital revenues, that it can sustain the news gathering and investigative reporting that is so eason shall to the country. i am hopeful about that, and we will have to see how it goes. it is something that is a concern as we see resources for newsgathering decline. >> lots of people would like to know your take on edward snowden . do you consider him a snowblower, a leaker?

>> i am not going to speak to if i do, that sort of becomes one of the -- what gets reported about what i said here today. denopinion of edwards snow is frankly not that important. i do not regard it relevant to today.ic i'm speaking our quibble with how this investigation was conducted and trying to avoid it from happening again, and my particular view of one particular person or another is not terribly relevant. i would say that i would agree with president obama in that i welcome that debate. i think it could be a healthy debate for the country. but our issue today and the

used tor ap -- ap is covering the news, the biggest news stories in the world. we are not used to being the news story, so it is not entirely comfortable for us. we are doing our best to cover it objectively, and it is up to me then to speak and articulate ap's position here and what we think what will happen, and i will do that, but we also understand that it is not far -- our position to go out and mouth off about every issue. whetherquestioner asks you think major media let's us sufficiently scrutinized the obama administration's scrutiny of reporting. >> i am not sure. because of the ap issue and the fox news issue,

there has been greater awareness and more focus on the obama administration's aggressive stance toward leakers. is more well known it has gottenat more scrutiny since then. so, i think it may not have gotten much attention before. i think it will get more attention now as a result of these cases, especially if they continue to impinge on first amendment rights. >> we are almost out of time, but i have a couple of important housekeeping matters to take care of. i would like to remind you of ing speakers. we have curly fear reena, chairman of good 360, and on august 8 have jim rogers, president and ceo of duke

energy. i would like to present our guest with the traditional national press club coffee mug. rice great. great. thank you very much. >> we have had a serious our here. we will end on a lighthearted note. our sources tell us you like to use rock lyrics in your speeches. you did not do that today, but we would like to know if you could find some lyrics that would describe what has happened with the ap and doj in the last month and a half. [laughter] let me think here. do you have another last question? >> that is at. >> yeah. gimmee shelter -- shelter. ,nd another rolling stone song this could be the last time. thank you very much. >> thank you.

[applause] thank you. thank you all for coming today. i would like to thank the national press club staff, including the journalism institute for helping organize the event. you can find more information about the press club on our website, and you if you would like to get a copy of the program, you can find it there as well at www.press.org. thank you. we are jorn. -- we are adjourned. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

>> lives now to the white house rose garden as the president is about to present his nominee for fbi director. would replace robert mueller who is stepping down in september. >> ladies and gentlemen, please silence your cell phones. the program will begin in two minutes.

ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states, accompanied by mr. bob mueller and mr. jim comey. >> good afternoon, everybody. these have a seat. for more than a century, we have counted on the dedicated men and women of the fbi to keep us safe. in that time, the fbi has been led by six directors, and the second longest serving rector of the fbi. for the last 12 years has been an exemplary public servant, bob mueller. by law of fbi director's only served four 10 years, but back up,011, when bob's term was i asked congress to give him two more years. it was not a request i made lightly, and i know congress did not grant it lightly, but at the

time transitions were underway at the cia and the pentagon, and given the threats are facing -- facing our nation, it was critical to have bob's strong leadership at the bureau. 12 years is a long time to do anything. and i guarantee you that bob plus wife agrees. in addition to asking congress, we need approval from ann as well. bob prepares to complete his service, this is a wonderful opportunity for all of us as a nation to say thank you to bob and ann, but also gives me a chance to enhance -- announce my next choice for the fbi. jim comey. every day our staff devote their lives to keep us secure from the streets of our cities to the

battlefield of afghanistan. they embodied the core principles of fidelity, bravery, and integrity. bob mueller has embodied those values through decades of public service and lived them every day as fbi director during an extraordinary time in our nation cost history. bob some of you will recall was sworn in just days before 9/11. bob not only played a key role in her response to those attacks, he began one of the biggest transformations of the fbi in history to make sure that nothing like that ever happens again. like the marine that he has always been, bob never took his eyes off his mission. under his watch, the fbi joined forces with our intelligence, military, and homeland security professionals to break up al and for their pot. i will say it as clearly as i can, can't list of americans are alive today our countries more secure because of the fbi's

outstanding work under the leadership of bob mueller. bob and the fbi had been tireless against a whole range of challenges, from preventing violent crime and reducing gang activity, including along our border, to cracking down on white-collar criminals. today, there are many in the fbi who have never known the bureau without bob at the helm, and like us they have admired his calm underut his pressure, devotion to our security, and his fidelity to the values that make us who we are. attributed toark his humility that most of you would not recognize him on the street, but all of us are better because of his service. all, i cannot tell you how grateful i am to you for your service. i know everyone here jointly insane you will be remembered as one of the finest directors in the history of the fbi, and one

of the most admired public servants of our time. it beenly, not only has a pleasure to work with bob, but i know very few people in public life who have shown more integrity, more consistently, under more pressure than bob mueller. [applause] i think bob will agree when i say we have the perfect person to carry on this work in jim comey, a man who stands very rule of justice and the law. i was saying while we were taking pictures with his gorgeous family here that they are all what michelle calls normalites.

the grandson of a patrolman who worked his way up to leave the yonkers police department, he has law enforcement is blood. he helped bring down the gambino crime family, as a federal prosecutor in virginia he led an aggressive effort to combat gun violence reduce homicide rates and save lives, and he has been relentless, whether standing up for consumers against corporate fraud or bringing terrorists to justice. and as deputy attorney general he helped lead the justices department with skill and wisdom him a meeting threats we know about and staying perpetually prepared for the ones that can emerge suddenly. so jim is exceptionally qualified to handle the full range of challenges a spy today's fbi, from threats like violence and organized crime to protecting civil rights and children from exploitation, to meeting transnational challenges like terrorism and cyber threats.

just as important as jim's experience is his character. he has talked about how he and his brother nearly lost their lives. they were at home and an intruder held them at gunpoint. he understands deeply in his core the anguish of the dims of crime, what they go through, and he has made it his life's work to spare others that pain. to know jim is to know his independence and his deep integrity. like bob he has been in washington sometimes, he does not care for politics, only cares about getting the job done. in key moments he joined bob in standing up for what he leaves was right, and is prepared to give up the job he loved rather than -- as jim has said we know the rule of law sets this nation apart and its foundation. jim understands at a time of crisis we are not just solely by

we many pots we -- plots bring to justice, we [indiscernible] making sure we are maintaining fidelity to those values that we cherish is a constant mission. that is who we are. and it is in large part because of my confidence, not only in his experience and his skill, but his integrity that i am confident that jim will be a leader who understands how to keep america safe and stay true to our founding ideals no matter what the future may bring. and his wife, thank you for your service. i want to thank jim, his wife

patrice and his family who are here as he takes on this important role. he could not do this without you and he is extraordinarily proud of all of you, and i can see why. this is a 10-year assignment. i make this nomination confident that as long after i left office our security will be in good hands with service like jim, and so i urge as usual for the senate to act properly with hearings and to confirm our next fbi director right-of-way. i would like now to give both of them a chance to say a few words, starting with bob. let me start by thanking you for those kind words. i also want to express my gratitude to both president bush and president obama for giving me the honor and a privilege of serving as the fbi director during these last few years.

i want to take the opportunity to thank the men and women of the fbi. it is through their work, dedication of their adaptability that the fbi is better able to predict and prevent terrorism and crime of here and abroad. myant to thank my wife and family for the support and their patients over the last 12 years, and i want to commend the president for the choice of jim comey as the next rector of the fbi. i have had the opportunity to work with jim or a number of years in the department of justice, and i have found him to beat a man of honesty, dedication, and integrity. his experience, judgment, and strong sense of 2-d will benefit not only the bureau, but the country as a whole. again, mr. president, take you for this opportunity to serve.

-- thank you for this opportunity to serve. [applause] >> thank you, mr. president, for this honor and opportunity. i am not sure i have words to describe how excited i am to return to justice and especially to get work again with the people of the fbi. they are men and women who have devoted their lives to serving and protecting others, and i cannot wait to be there colleague get again. it everything i am and have done in my adult life is due to the great good fortune of marrying up. and supporte long and occasional constructive chrism of my beloved troops of

my amazing wife patrice and abby, clear, bright, kate, and more rain, i am a much other person than i would have been without you. thank you for that. i must be out of my mind to be following bob mueller. i do not know whether i can fill those shoes, but i know however i do i will be standing truly on the shoulders of a giant, someone who has made a remarkable difference in the life of this country. i can promise you, mr. president, and mr. director i would do my very best to honor and protect that legacy, and i thank you again for this chance to serve. thank you. [applause] can we give bob mueller and ann one more round of applause? [applause]

>> thank you. >> president obama on his choice to be the next fbi director, jim comey. if confirmed by the senate he would replace robert mueller who steps down in the fall. leahyatement -- patrick said mr. comey showed the kind of independence needed to lead the fbi when he stood up to those in the last administration who sought to violate the rule of law. senator leahy called for senators to give mr. comey the swift and respectable confirmation he deserves. if you missed any of this announcement, it is available

for viewing any time at www.c- span.org. mitch mcconnell took aim at the obama administration today, holly get a bully. he was speaking at the american enterprise institute about the first amendment and free speech revelationsg recent about the irs. here's part of what he had to say. >> a sitting president who will not accept the fact that public will not applaud him for everything he does. president expects him to applaud everything he does. you callo you today is out these attacks on the first amendment for guardedness of the target, because the right does not protect to protect what is popular, it exists to protect

what is unpopular. we moment we forget this is are all at risk. if liberals cannot compete on a level playing field, they should think of better arguments. what is wrong with the competition of ideas? argument is so weak that you have to try to intimidate and shut up your opponents in order to try to win the game? the only way to beat a bully is to fight back. that is what all of us need to do. the wise to the ways of the left , never give an inch when it comes to free speech. his remarks at the american enterprise institute any time at our website, www.c- span.org.

frederickis week douglass was honored at a statute dedication at the u.s. capitol. the greate granddaughter of frederick douglass saturday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span. when he talked about transparency, you are going to give up something. you will be giving signals to advertisers as to what our capabilities are. the more specific you get about the program and about the oversight, the more specific you get about the capabilities and the successes to that extent. you have people sitting around saying now i understand what can be done with our numbers in yemen and in the united states and i will find another way to communicate and keep that in mind. there's a price to be paid for

that transparency. where that line line is drawn in terms of identifying what our capabilities are, is out of our hands. way, we us to do it one will do it that way. there is a price to be paid for that transparency. >> robert mueller makes his last appearance before the senate she dear sherry committee on saturday at 10:00 p.m. eastern. -- the senate to do sherry committee on saturday at 10:00 p.m. eastern. on american history tv, interviews with key house committee staff investigating whether there were grounds to impeach nixon. sunday at 3:00. earlier keep out standard testified the house intelligence committee about his agency's secret surveillance programs. provided leads in

more than 50 terrorism plots. they describe her trolls -- controls. this is about three hours.

[indiscernible] >> on short notice. that is why we turn the microphone off. hold on for technical difficulties. can you hear me?

the committee will come to order. and thank director you for appearing before us, on short notice. the ranking member and i believe it is important to hold an open hearing today, and we do not do a tremendous amount of those to provide this house and the public with an opportunity to

hear from you how the government is using the legal authorities that congress has provided to the executive ranch since the terrorist attacks of september 11, two thousand one. i would like to recognize the hard work of the men and women of the nsa and the rest of the intelligence community who work day in and day out to disrupt threats to our national security. people at the nsa in particular have heard a constant public drumbeat about a laundry list of the pharisee is angst they are alleged to be doing to spy on americans. all of them wrong. the misperceptions have been great. they keep their heads down and keep working every day to keep us safe. general hunt zander, convey our to your team for continuing every day despite much mint first -- misinformation about the quality of their work, and thank them for continuing to work to protect america. i want to take this moment to

thank general alexander has been extended as national security advisor three different times. that is a patriot. this is a very difficult job and a very get difficult time in our history of and for the general to accept those extensions of his military service to protect this nation, i think with all of misinformation out there i want to thank you for that. thank you for your patriotism. thank you for continuing to serve to protect the united states again. you have that great burden of knowing lots of classified information you cannot talk about.y i want to thank you for your service to the country. the committee has been briefed on these efforts over a regular basis as a part of our oversight responsibility over the 16 element of the intelligence community and the national intelligence program. programs,nderstand most of these briefings and

hearings have taken place in classified settings. the collection efforts under the business records provision in section seven 02, the foreign intelligence surveillance act, are legal, court approved, and subject to an extensive oversight gene. i look forward to hearing from the witnesses about the protections and oversight for these programs. we look forward to hearing what you are able to discuss in an open forum about how the eta you have obtained from providers under court order, especially under the business records mr. cole,is used, and we look forward about hearing about the legal authorities about what privacy protections americans have in these business records. one of the frustrating part about being a member of this challengednd being is sitting at the intersection of classified programs and transparent democracy as representatives of the american people. the public trusts the government

to protect the country from buther 9/11 type of attack, that trust can wane when they're faced with with inaccuracies and outright lies about when the programs are being run. one of the more damaging aspects of leaking incomplete information is it paints and in accurate picture and fosters distrust. this is so when does of us who have taken the oath to protect information that can damage the national security if released to not publicly provide clarifying information because it remains classified. it is at times like these where our enemies within become almost as damaging as our enemies on the outside. it is critically important to protect sources and methods so we are not giving the enemy our playbook. it is important to talk about how these programs protect us so to be authorized

and we highlight the protections and oversight of which these programs operate under. general alexander, we have talked over the last week about the need to be able to publicly elaborate on the success stories these authorities have contributed to without jeopardizing ongoing operations. i know you will have the opportunity to talk about several of those today. i placed the utmost vital in protecting sources and methods, and that is why you have been so diligent in making sure anything that is disclosed comports with the need to protect sources and methods so that we do not make it easier for the bad guys overseas, terrorists in this case, to do harm to the united states citizens. i respect that. i recognize when we are forced into the position of having so public late discuss intelligence or groups to do irresponsible criminal behavior we also have to be careful balancing the need protecting secrecy.

trust theming public a we provide more examples of how these authorities have disrupted plots. i appreciate your efforts in this regard. for these authorities to continue, they must continue to be available. without them i fear we will return to the position where we were prior to the attacks on 9/11 and that would be unacceptable for all of us. i hope the hearing will help answer lessons that have arisen as a result of the fragmentary and distorted illegal disclosures over the past several days. general extender for his statement, i turn the floor over to the ranking member for any statement he would like to make. leadership at nsa has been outstanding, and i want to acknowledge the people who work there every day. a lot of the people who go to work to to protect our country who work hard every day are thinkned that the public

they are doing something wrong, and that is not the case. the most important thing we can do today is that the public know the true facts. i know the chairman and i have asked you to help declassify what we can and will not hurt our security so the public can understand this is legal, why we're doing this program, and how it protects us. we are here because of the disclosure of article classified information that keeps our country safe. put ourk by an american country and allies in danger by giving the terrorists a good look at the playbook that we use to protect our country. the terrorists know many of our sources and methods. there has been a lot in the media about this attrition. some right, a lot wrong. the hold this hearing today so we can set the record straight and the people can hear from the intelligence community as to what is allowed. we need to educate members of congress also with the public.

to be clear, that neck nsa is prohibited from listening in on phone calls of americans without proper court approved google authorities. we live in a country of laws. they are layered with oversight government.evels of after 9/11 we learned that a group of terrorists were living in the united states can actively plotting to kill americans on our own soil and we did not have the proper authorities in place to stop them before they could kill almost 3000 people. intelligence is the best defense. there are too many authorities that have been highlighted in the press. the business record revision allows the government to collect meta-data. ows us toority all close the gap. it enables our community to discover whether foreign terrorists have been in contact with people who may be planning an attack on u.s. soil. sevencond authority is

and two of the fisa amendment out that allows the government to collect content of e-mail and phone calls of foreigners. located outside the united states. this allows the government to get information about terrorists about threats, weapons, and nuclear weapons proliferation that threaten america. this authority prohibits the targeting of citizens or residents without a court order no matter where they are located. without these are legal. theress approved them over last few years. these authorities have been attacks.event the fact remains we must figure out how this could have happened, how this administrator was able to access such information about such sensitive matters and how was he able to download it and move it from his workplace undetected. we need to change our systems and practices and employ the latest in technology that will alert superiors.

we need to seal this crack in the system. and to repeat something incredibly important, nsa is prohibited from listening to phone calls or reading e-mails americans without a court order. i look forward to your testimony. >> thank you. general howe, the floor is yours. kind words. for the it is a privilege to serve as the director of the national security agency and the commander of u.s. cyber command. we have extraordinary people doing great work to protect this country and protect our civil liberties and privacy. over the past few weeks on offer is disclosures of classified information have resulted in considerable debate in the press of these programs. fueled by is incomplete and inaccurate information. a little context provided on the

purpose of these programs, their value to our national security, and of our allies. and the protections that are in place to preserve our privacy and civil liberties. today we will provide additional detail and context on these two programs to help inform that debate. these programs were approved by the administration, congress, and the courts. from my perspective, a sound legal process that we all work together as a government to protect our nation and our civil liberties and privacy. thatcally, the documents have been released so far showed the rigorous oversight and compliance our government uses to balance security with civil liberties and privacy. let me start by saying that i would much rather be here today debating this point than trying to explain how we failed to

prevent another 9/11. it is a testament to the ongoing teamwork of the central federalence agency, the bureau of investigation, and the and working with allies industry partners that we have been able to connect the dots and prevent more terrorist attacks. 11,events of september 2001, occurred in part because of a failure on the part of our government to connect those dots. some of those word in the united states. intelligence community was not able to connect those domestic dots, phone calls between operatives in the u.s. and al qaeda terrorists overseas. following the 9/11 commission among which investigated the intelligence community's failure to detect 9/11, congress passed the patriot act. ittion 215 of that act as has been interpreted and applied

helps the government close that gap by enabling the detection of telephone contact between terrorists overseas and operatives within the united states. as director mueller emphasized last week during his testimony to the judiciary committee, if we had had section 215 in place prior to 9/11, we may have known that the 9/11 hijacker was located in san diego and communicating with a known al qaeda safe house in yemen. in recent years, these programs together with other intelligence have protected the u.s. and our allies from terrorist threats across the globe, to include helping prevent the terrorist -- potential terrorist events over 50 times since 9/11. we will actually bring forward to the community tomorrow documents that the interagency has agreed on that in a

classified setting gives everyone of of those cases for your review. to that, but as the chairman noted, if we give all this out, to give all the secrets of how we are tracking threats. too much is at risk for us, and we would like to make three points. first, these programs are critical to the intelligence community's ability to protect our nation and our allies' security. toy can assist the efforts connect the dots. second, these programs are limited, focused, and subject to rigorous oversight.

they have distinct purposes and oversight mechanisms. we have rigorous training programs for our analysts and their supervisors to understand their responsibilities regarding compliance. third, the disciplined operation thehese programs protects privacy and civil liberties of the american people. we will provide important details about each of those. i would ask the deputy attorney general mr. cole to discuss this. >> thank you, general. committee, as general outlander said, and as the chairman and ranking member have said, all of us in the national security area are constantly trying to balance protecting public safety with protecting people's privacy and civil liberties in this government, and it is a constant job balancing this. you think we have done this in

these instances. there are statutes that are passed by congress. this is not a program that is off the books. that has been hidden away. this is part of what government puts together and discusses, statutes are passed, it is overseen by three branches of our government, live legislature, judiciary, and the executive branch. the process of oversight occurs before, during, and after the processes that we are talking about today. i want to talk about how that works, what the legal framework is, and what some of the protections are that are put into it. first of all, what we have seen published in the newspaper concerning 215, the business records provisions of the patriot act and also modify fisa of you have seen one order in the newspaper that is a couple of pages long that just says under that order, we are allowed to acquire metadata, telephone

records. that is one of two orders. it is the smallest of the two orders, and the other order, which has not been published, goes into in great detail what metadat,o with that the d what we can do with it once was a threat and what the conditions are that are placed on us to make sure we protect argosy and civil liberties and at the same time protect public safety. let me go through a few of the features. first of all, it is metadata, phone records. this is just what you would get in your own phone bill. it is the number that was dialed from the number that was dialed to the date and the length of time. that is all we get under 215. we do not get the identity of any of the parties to this phone call. we do not get any cell site or location information as to where

any of these phones were located , and most importantly, and you'll probably hear this 100 times a day, we do not get any content out of this. we do not listen in on anybody's calls under this program at all. 215.is under section this has been debated and up for reauthorization and re- authorized twice by the united states congress since its inception in 2006 and in 2011. in order -- the way it works is there is an application that is made by the fbi under the statute to the fisa court. this is the fisc. they asked for and received permission to get records that are relevant to a national security investigation. that itt demonstrate will be operated under the guidelines that are set forth i

the attorney general under executive order 12333. it is limited to tangible objects. what does that mean? these are like records. metadata, the phone data i've been describing, but limited to things you could get with a grand jury subpoena, those kinds of records. it is important to note prosecutors issued subpoenas all the time and do not need any involvement of a court or anybody else to do so. under this program, we need to get permission from the court to issue this ahead of time so there is court involvement with the issuance of these orders from a which is different from a grand jury subpoena, but the type of records, just documents, business records, things like that are limited to those same types of records we could get through a grand jury subpoena.

now, the orders that we get last 90 days. up and renewo re- these orders every 90 days in order to do this. there are strict controls over what we can do under the order, and that is the bigger order that has not been published. there is restrictions on who can access it in this order. it is stored in repositories at nsa that can only be accessed by a limited number of people and the people who are allowed to specialt have to have and rigorous training about the standards under which they can access it. in order to access it, there needs to be a finding that there is reasonable suspicion that you can articulate, that you can put into words, that the person whose phone records you want to with some sorted

of terrorist organizations, and they are defined. it is not everyone. they are limited in the statute. there has to be independent evidence aside from these phone records that the person you are targeting is involved with a terrorist organization. if that person is a united states person, a citizen or lawful permanent resident, you have to have something more than just there on speeches, there are readings, their own first amendment type activity. you have to have additional evidence beyond that that indicates there is reasonable articulable suspicion that these people are associated with specific terrorist organizations. one of the things to keep in mind that under the law the fourth amendment does not apply to these records. case by the supreme court that indicated that toll records, phone records like this that do not include any content

are not covered by the fourth amendment, because people do not have a reasonable expectation of called andwho they when they called. that is something you show to the phone company. this something you should too many people within the phone company on a regular basis. once those records are accessed andr the this process reasonable, articulable suspicion is found, that is found by specially trained people. it is reviewed by their supervisors. it is documented in writing at of time so that somebody can take a look at it. any of the accessing that is done is done in an auditable fashion. there's a trail of it, so both the decision and the facts that support the accessing and the query is documented, the amount that was done, what was done, all of that is documented and is reviewed and audited on a fairly regular basis. there are also minimization procedures that are put into place so that any of the

is acquired has to be minimized, it has to be limited, and its use is strictly limited, and all that is set out in the terms of the court order. persons are.s. involved, there are particular restrictions on how any information concerning a u.s. person can be used in this. now, there is extensive doneight and compliance is with these records and with this process. every now and then there may be a mistake, a wrong phone number t rippers and is targeted because they're a mistake in the front record, nothing like that. each of those apply to incidents, if and when they occur, have to be reported to the fisa court immediately. court pushes back on this. they want to find out what the

were the procedures and mechanisms allowed this to happen and what have you done to fix it. we also provide the intelligence and judiciary committees with any significant interpretations 215 the court makes in the statute. we provide those as well as the application to the intelligence committee and to the judiciary committee. every 30 days, we are filing with the court a report that --cribes how we governments how we implement this program.

the number of instances that the query results in containing u.s. person information that was shared outside of nsa, and all of this goes to the court. at least once every 90 days and thetimes more frequently, department of justice, the office of the director of national intelligence and the nsa meet to assess compliance with all of these requirements that are contained in the court order. separately, the department of justice meet with the inspector general for the national security agency and assesses compliance on a regular basis. statute there is by recording of certain information that goes to congress in semi annual reports we make on top of the periodic reports we make if there is a plug compliance incident. those include information about the data that was required and

how we are performing under this statute. once again, keeping in mind all of this is done with three branches of government involved, oversight, and initiation by the executive branch with review by multiple agencies, statutes that are passed by congress, oversight by congress, and then oversight by the court. the fisatatute under amendments act is different. under this, we do get content, but there's a big difference. 702are only allowed under two target for this purpose non- us persons who are located outside of the united states. so if you have a u.s. permanent resident who is in madrid, spain , he cannot target them under 702. or if you have a non--u.s. person who is in cleveland, ohio, we cannot target them under 702.

in order to target a person, they have to be either a citizen -- neither a citizens in nor a permanent u.s. resident and need to be outside the united states while we are targeting them. there's prohibitions in the statute. for example, you cannot reverse target somebody. this is where you target somebody who is out of the country, but your goal is to capture conversations to somebody who is inside the united states. you're trying to do indirectly what you cannot do directly. prohibited byitly this statute. if there's ever any indication it it is being done, because we report the use that we make of the statute to the court and to the congress, that is seen. au also have to have valid purpose in order to do any of the targeting on this. so you have to make sure as it was described that is being done categories of

weapons of mass destruction, foreign intelligence, things of that nature. these are all done pursuant to an application that is made by the attorney general and the director of national intelligence to the fisk. -- the fisc. it allows the targeting to be done for a year. it has to be done at the end of that year to for it to be re- upped. there is also a requirement that again there is reporting. you cannot under the terms of collecttute have had any information on conversations that are wholly within the united states. you're targeting somebody outside the united states. if they make a call to inside the united states, that can be collected, but is only because the target of that call outside the united states initiated that call and went there. if the calls are wholly within

the united states, we cannot collect them. if you are targeting a person was outside the united states, and you find that they come into the united states, we have to stop the targeting right away, and if there's any lag and and we find out we collected information because we were not aware they were in the united states, the have to take that information, purchase it from the systems, and not use it. there's a great deal of minimization procedures that are involved here, particularly concerning any of the acquisition of information that deals with or comes from u.s. persons. only targeting people outside the united states who are not u.s. persons, but if we do acquire any information that relates to a u.s. person, under limited criteria only can we keep it. if it has to do with foreign intelligence in that conversation or understanding

foreign intelligence or evidence of a crime or threat of serious policy injury, you can respond to that. other than that, we have to get rid of it, we have to purge, and we cannot use it. if we inadvertently at core any of it, meaning to,, again, once that is discovered, he have to get rid of it and purge it. the targeting decisions that are done are again documented ahead -- reviewed byd supervisor before they can take place. the office of director of national intelligence conduct on-site reviews of each targeting that is done they look at them and determine that they were done properly. this is done at least every 60 days and many time done more ,uickly than that. in addition if there is any compliance issue it is immediately reported. they push back -- how did this

happen? what are the procedures? what mechanisms are you using to fix this? what have you done to remedy it? have you gotten rid of it as you are required? we are providing congress with all of that information if we have compliance problems. we also report quarterly concerning the compliance issues that have arisen during that quarter on top of the immediate reports and anyt we have done to fix it of the ones we have reported. we accept our compliance with the targeting and minimization we also provide a semi annual report concerning the implementation of the program. what we have done and found.

we will provide to congress documents that contain how we are dealing with the minimization procedures, any significant legal interpretation concerning statutes, as well as orders and applications that relate to that. on top of all of this, annually nsa inspector general for the does an assessment that he provides to congress. the number of targets that were reasonably lead at that time to be outside the united states and later determined to be in the united states and what was done. in short, there is before, during, and after the involvement of all three branches of the united states government on a robust and fairly intimate way. i would like to make one other observation if i may. we have tried to do this as

thorough and protect the and as -- as protective and transparent a way as we possibly can incident it is the gathering of intelligence information. countries and allies of ours all over the world collect intelligence. there have recently been studies of how transparent our system is in the united states compared to many of our partners. many in the eu, countries like france, germany, the u.k. a report recently issued in may of this year found that the fisa amendment acts, the statue we are talking about, "imposes if not more due process on foreign intelligence surveillance and other countries." this includes eu countries. the u.s. is much more transparent about its procedures

and requires more due process investigations regarding national security and terrorism and foreign intelligence. the balance is always when we seek to strive to achieve, but as i have laid out to you, we have done everything we can to achieve it. part of the proof of what we have done is this report that came out last month indicating our system is as good and better than all of our allies. thank you, mr. chairman. >> the chairman will switch to the value of the program and talk about statistics put together. as he stated, these programs are immensely valuable for protecting our nation and securing the security of our allies. information gathered on these programs provided the u.s. government with critical leads to help prevent over 50 potential terrorist events in more than 20 countries around the world.

faa contributed to over 90% of these cases. at least 10 of these events included homeland based threats. a vast majority, fisa contributed as well. it has a great partnership with the homeland security department. the real lead is the federal bureau of investigation. it has been our honor and privilege to work with director mueller. >> thank you, general. thank you, chairman, and members of the committee for the opportunity to be here. nsa and the f b i have a unique relationship. it is one that has been invaluable since 9/11. i want to highlight some fall of 2009,the the nsa

intercepted an e-mail from a terrorist located inside the pakistan talking with an individual inside of the united states talking about a recipe for explosives. that individual was identified. he was located in denver, colorado. the fbi followed him to new york city. later we executed search warrants and found bomb making -- innents in baghdad. backpacks. he later confessed to a plot to bomb the new york subway system. also working with fisa, business records. we are able to get a previously unknown number of a co- conspirator. this was the first al qaeda plot directed from pakistan. nsa utilized authority with

monitoring and extremism in yemen. he was in contact with an individual in the united states. he and other individuals that we identified through fisa were able to detect a nascent plotting to bomb the new york stock exchange. he had been information and support to the plot. the fbi disrupted and arrested individuals. a u.s. citizen living in chicago, the fbi received intelligence regarding his possible involvement in the 2008 mumbai attacks. there was a killing over 160 found that he was

working on a plot to bomb a danish newspaper office that had published a cartoon depiction of the prophet mohammed. tofact, he later confessed conducting surveillance of the danish newspaper office. he and his co-conspirators were the fbid for this plot. opened an investigation shortly after 9/11. we did not have enough information so we shortly thereafter close to the investigation. however, the nsa, using the business records fisa get this off that this individual had indirect contact with a known terrorist overseas. we were able to reopen this investigation and identify additional individuals and were able to disrupt this terrorist activity. thank you. >> so that is four cases total

that we have put out publicly. what we are in the process of doing is looking at over 50 cases that are classified and will remain classified. those 50 cases right now has been look that by the fbi and the cia and other partners in the national counterterrorism center so that you know what we have put in there is exactly right. i believe the numbers from those cases are something we can publicly reveal and publicly talk about. what we are concerned is going into more detail on how we stop some of these cases as we are concerned it will give our adversaries a way to work around those and attack us or our allies. that would be unacceptable. i have concerns that the intentional and irresponsible leak of programs will have a long and a reversible impact on

our nations security and on behalf of our allies. this is significant. i want to emphasize that foreign intelligence programs we are talking about is the best tool that we have to go after these guys. we cannot lose those capabilities. one of the issues that has repeatedly come up -- we have the deputy director of the national security agency becky -- will give you some specifics about what we do and how we do it with these programs. >> thank you. i'm pleased to be able to really describe it to programs as use by the national security agency with a focus on the internal

control and oversight provided. the two complementary, but distinct programs are focused on foreign intelligence. that is the nsa charge. the first program authorizes a collection of telephone metadata only. it is the only telephone numbers and the time and date of the call and the duration. this authority does not therefore allow the government to listen in on anyone's telephone calls, even that of a terrorist. information is required with a court order. it does not contain the content of what you are saying, identities of the peopleor any location. this program was specifically developed to allow the u.s. government to detecting indications between terrorist operating outside the u.s. or potential operatives inside the u.s. the control and use of this data are specific and

rigorous and design to ensure focus on counterterrorism. the metadata required may be queried only when there is a reasonable suspicion they saw specific and documented facts like an identifier such as a telephone phone number. these determinations are referred to as being reasonable, suspicious standards. during 2012, 12 months of 2012, we approved fewer than 300 unique numbers that were used to initiate a query of the data. the second program authorized under the act authorizes targeted only for communications of foreigners who are not within the united states for foreign intelligence purposes. as i noted earlier, nsa being a foreign intelligence agency, that is information related to activities including foreign governments are organizations or

international terrorists. let me be clear -- section 702 cannot be and is not used to potentially target any u.s. citizen for any u.s. person, any person known to be in the united states, a person outside the united states, if the purpose is to acquire information from a person inside the united states. we may not do any of those things using this authority. the program is part of our counterterrorism efforts. more was 90% of the information gained from this particular authority. again, if you want to target the content of the u.s. person anywhere around the world, you cannot use this authority. you must get a specific court warrant. i would like to describe in detail some rigorous oversight from each of these programs. first, a program known as business records fisa, controls how we manage and use the data.

it is explicitly defined if approved by the surveillance court. it is segregated from other data sets held by the nsa. everything is documented and audited. only 20 analyst at nsa and their two managers are authorized to approve numbers that might be used to query the database. all of those individuals must be trained in the specific procedures to determine what is meant by reasonable suspicion. every 30 days, nsa reports to the courts the number of queries and dissemination made during that time. every 90 days, the department of justice samples all data queries and especially reviews the basis for every u.s. person or every u.s. identity query made. we do not know the names of the individuals of the queries we might make. only seven senior officials that nsa are authorized that the dissemination of any information

-- believe that might be a too attributable to the u.s. person. the foreign intelligence survey reviews every 90 days. the data must be destroyed within five years of acquisition. nsa and the department of justice oversight committee on employment of the program, we provide written notification of all significant developments. the justice department provides oversight committees opinions regarding the programs. turning my attention to another program, the foreign intelligence court annually review certification that is required by law and jointly submitted by the attorney general and and the director of national intelligence. the certifications defined what might be appropriate late

targeted. the attorney general and the court both agree are consistent with the law and the fourth amendment of the constitution. these require that a communication regarding a u.s. person must be destroyed if it does not maintain evidence of a a number of records -- reports are required. a semi annual assessment by the department of justice in the office of the director of national intelligence regarding compliance with the procedures. the number of dissemination is that might occur, the number of targets found in the united states, and whether the communication for such targets are reviewed. an annual director report is required to describe the efforts taken by nsa and adjust thecash

-- address the number of u.s. person identities. technology relevant to an authorized to the and any noncompliant to include executive branch's plan for remedying that same event. in addition to the procedures i have described, the department of justice conducts on-site reviews to sample nsa targeting decisions every 60 days. i would conclude with my section to say that july 2012, the senate intelligence committee reported progress over the four years of the law at that time. he said across the four-year history of the program, the committee had identified a thee willful effort buy executive branch to violate the

law. >> to wrap up, there are 10 one of in the decisions. those is the operations officer. everyone of those have to be credentialed. i do want to hit a couple ofke y points. under the 702 program, the u.s. government does not use unilateral from servers in u.s. companies. rather the companies are compelled to provide records using methods that are in strict compliance with the law. further, the deputy attorney general noted virtually all countries have lawful national awfully interceptor programs in which providers share data about individuals a believer presented -- they believe represent a threat

to their societies. communication providers are required to comply with those programs in the countries in which they operate. the united states is not unique in this capability. the u.s. operates this program under the strict oversight and compliance regime it was noted above with careful oversight by the courts, congress, and the ,dministration. in practice u.s. companies have put energy in focus and commitment into consistently protecting the privacy other customers around the the world and meeting their obligations under the laws of the u.s. and other countries in which they operate. i believe they take those seriously. as americans, we value our privacy and civil liberties. as americans, the also value our security and our safety. in the 12 years since the attack on september 11, we have lived in relative safety and security as a nation. that security is a direct result of the intelligent communities by effort to better connect the

dots and learn from the mistakes that permitted those attacks to occur. in those 12 years, we have thought long and hard about oversight and compliance and how to minimize the impact on our fellow citizens privacy. we have created and implemented and continue to monitor a comprehensive mission compliance program inside nsa. this program was develop a stun industry best practices they keep technologies aligned with approved procedures. outside of nsa, the office of the director of national intelligence department of justice and foreign intelligence surveillance court revive robust oversight, as well as this committee. i believe we have that balance right. in summary, these programs are critical to the intelligence community's ability to protect

our nation and our allies. it allows us to connect the dots. these programs are limited, focus, and subject to rigorous oversight. they have distinct or basis and oversight mechanisms. third, the disciplined operations of these programs protects the civil liberties of the american people. the people of nsa takes these response abilities to heart. they protect our nation and our allies as part of a bigger team. they protect our civil liberties. it has been an honor and privilege to lead these great americans. we will turn it back to you. >> members of the committee, i want to speak very briefly and address a couple of additional misconceptions that the public has been said about some programs. the first is the collection under 702 that it is somehow a

loosening of tradition standards because it does not require individualized warrants. in fact, exactly the opposite is the case. the kind of collection done under that section 702 is collecting foreign intelligence information from foreigners outside of the united states, it was historically done under his own authority without any kind of supervision whatsoever. as a result of the fisa act, there are restrictions and limitations that have been described by the other witnesses. this is a tightening of standards from what they were before. the second misconception is that the core is a rubber stamp for the executive branch. people point to the fact -- this does not recognize the actual process that we go through. the fisa court appointed from

around the country take this on in addition to their other they are widely an experienced and respected judges. they work only on fisa matters. when we prepare an application for fisa, whether it is one of these programs or traditional --sa, we first of the to the submit to the court what is called a read copy. the court staff will review and comment on it. they will almost come back with questions and concerns and problems that they see. there is a process back and forth between the government and the board to take care of those concerns. at the end of the day, we are confident that we are presenting something that the fisa court will approve. that is hardly a rubber stamp. it is rather extensive and serious judicial oversight of this process.

the third point -- misconception i want to make is that the process that we have here is one that simply relies on trust or individual analysts or people at nsa to obey the rules. i will not go into details as to the oversight. it has been adequately described. the point is that there is a multilayered level of oversight within nsa and involving my agency, the office of the director of national intelligence, and the fisa court and congress to ensure that these rules are complied with. the last point i want to address is that this information should not have been classified. it was classified to conceal it from the american people. the leaks are not damaging. you both made this point. these are extremely important collection programs to protect

us not only from terrorists, but other threats to our national security. there is a wide variety. they have produced a huge amount of valuable intelligence over the years. we are faced with an situation because this has been made public, we run the risk of losing these collection capabilities. we will know whether these leaks have caused us to lose capabilities. if they do have that effect, there is no doubt that they will cause our national security tobe affected. thank you. >> thank you all very much. i appreciate that. just a few quick questions. members have a lot of questions. for the record, can you describe quickly your civilian role? >> yes, sir. there has a husband senior serving military officers at the

national security agency -- there has always been a senior serving military officer at the national security agency. i search for a period of 13 years active-duty on the air force and transferred to that national security agency. >> you rose to the rank of? >> i was general of international guard. >> i just want to get on the record that he had military service as well as civilian service. >> i do. i transferred from the active air force to national security. i retained my filiation i was proud to be able to serve in the national guard. >> thank you. you mentioned queries of less than 300. what does that mean? >> a reasonable suspicion. a number of interests, telephone number might be associated with

connected plots of a specific plot overseas. there is a desire to see whether there is any connection to the united states. the process they go through is described as one where they make -- >> you do not put in a name? >> no. the only thing we get from providers are numbers. the dataset is numbers themselves. >> no names or addresses affiliated. >> no. >> just phone numbers. >> an analyst would try to determine whether there was a describable, there must be written documentation that says there is a suspicion that this is attributed to a foreign plot. after having made that determination, there would be further checked to determine whether it is possible to discern whether it is associated with a u.s. person.

you might look at the area code and say it could likely be in the united states. we know within this area that is d.c. 310, that would be that would be your only insight. if that were to be the case, it would get for the review to ensure is not a situation or some and is merely expressing their first amendment rights. if that was all it was, however objectionable, that is not a basis to for that database. if it gets further, it must be further approved. the query itself would just be a number. they would determine whether that number exist in the database. that is how the query is formed.

>> it is not a named or an address. it is a phone number. >> if it were a name or address, there would be no possibility that the database would return any meaningful result. >> just a phone number. >> just a phone number. what comes back when you query the database? >> just phone numbers. >> there are no names and addresses in that database. >> no. >> why only less than 300 queries or numbers into that database? >> only less than 300 numbers were approved. those might have been applied both will times. there might be some number greater than that. the reason there are very few, is that the court determined there is a narrow purpose for this use.

it cannot be to prosecute a greater understanding of the domestic plot or do anything other than terrorism. there must be very well defined and describable, written determination that this is a betweenon of a connection a foreign plot and a domestic nexus. and those are reported to the court? >> there are a number of queries reported to the court and any time there is a dissemination associated. >> and there is a court approved process in order to make that >>ery into that information? the department of justice provides a rich oversight auditing. >> thank you. general alexander, is the nsa on private company servers, as defined under these programs? >> we are not.

>> does the nsa have the ability to listen to americans' phone calls or read their e-mails under these programs? >> we do not have the authority. >> does the technology exists to flip a switch and have an analyst listen? >> no. >> the technology does not exist for individuals at the nsa to listen to americans' phone calls or read their e-mails? >> that is correct. >> help us understand that. if you get a piece of a number, there has been some public discussion that there is not a lot of value in what you might get from a program like this, that has this many levels of oversight. can you talk about how that might work into an investigation to help you prevent a terrorist attack in the united states? >> investigating terrorism is not an exact science.

it is like a mosaic. we try to take disparate pieces and bring them together to form a turf. there are many different pieces of intelligence. he have assets. we have physical surveillance. we have legal surveillance with legal process for phone records. with additional legal process, financial records. these programs are all valuable pieces to bring that mosaic together and figure out how these individuals are plotting to attack the united states here, or u.s. interests overseas. we hear the cliché, frequently, after 9/11, about connecting the dots. with the american public, we come together to put the dots together to form the pic chair-- picture to allow us to disrupt these

activities. >> thank you. given the large number of questions by members, i am going to move along. >> i want to thank all the witnesses for your presentations, especially mr. cole. i think you explained well andin a succinct way. it is unfortunate sometimes when we have incidents like this that a lot of negative or false information gets out. i think that those of us who work in this field and the intelligence field every day know what the facts are, and we are trying to now present those facts through this panel. that is important. but i would say that if i were to listen to the media accounts of what occurred in the beginning, i would be concerned. it is important we get the message out to the american public that what we do is legal. we are doing it to protect our national security from attacks from terrorists. you addressed this, but i think it is important to reemphasize

the fisa court. it is unfortunate. when people disagree with you, they attack you. they say things that are not true. we know these are federal judges. they have integrity. they will not approve anything they feel is wrong. we have 90 day periods where the court looks at this issue. general alexander, do you feel in any way that the fisa court is a rubber stamp they stunned the process? our system of government is checks and balances. that is what we do in this country. we follow our constitution. it is unfortunate the federal judges are being attacked. >> as you have stated, the federal judges on the court are superb. our nation can be proud of the way they make sure we do this exactly right. every time we make a mistake, they work with us to make sure it is done correctly to protect our civil liberties, write essay, and go through the court

process. they have been extremely professional. there is no rubber stamp. it is kind of interesting. it is like saying you just ran a 26 mile marathon, and somebody says, that was just a job. -- a jog. the details and specifics go for months through the fbi, the department of justice, and through the court on each of those orders. there is tremendous oversight, compliance, and work, and i think the court has done a superb job. but we worked hard to do is to bring all these under court supervision for just this reason. we have done the right thing, i think, for our country. >> the second thing i want to get into -- the public are saying, how did this happen? we have rules. we have regulations. we have individuals who work on this, and yet here we have a technical person who had lost a job, who had a background that

would not always be considered the best. we have to learn from mistakes, how they occur. what system are you or the director of the national intelligence administration putting in effect now to make sure what happened in this situation -- that if another person were to turn against his or her country, that we would have an alarm system that would not put us in this position right now? >> this is a difficult question, especially when that person is a system administrator, and they get great access. a system administrator is one that actually helps operate, run, set the conditions and stuff on a system or portion of the network. when one of those persons misuses their authorities, this is a huge problem. working with the director of national intelligence, what we are doing is working to come up

with a 2-person rule and oversight for those, and ensure that we have a way of blocking people from taking information out of our system. this is work in progress. we are working with the fbi. we do not have all the facts yet. as we are getting those facts, we are working through our system. the director has asked us to do that and provide that feedback to the rest of the community. >> thank you. i yield back. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you all for being here and for making some additional information available to the public. i know it is frustrating for you, as it is for us, to have these targeted, narrowly, and not be able to talk about the bigger picture. general alexander, you mentioned you are going to send us

tomorrow 50 cases that have been stopped because of these programs, basically. 4 have made public to this point, and i think there are 2 new ones that you are talking about today. but i would invite you to explain to us both of those 2 new cases, it including the operation wi-fi case. one of them starts with a 215. one starts with a 702. i think it is important for you to provide information about how these programs stopped those terrorist attacks. >> i am going to do for this, because the actual guys who did all the work was the fbi. and they did it exactly right. >> as i mentioned previously, the nsa -- it was out of kansas city. that was the example i referred to earlier. the nsa, utilizing 702 authority, identified an

extremist located in yemen. this extremist was talking with an individual located inside the united states, in kansas city, missouri. that individual was identified. the fbi immediately served legal process to identify him. we went up on electronic surveillance and identified his co-conspirators. this was the plot that was in the initial stages of plotting to bomb the new york stock exchange. we were able to disrupt the plot. we were able to lure some individuals to the united states and affect there are rest, and they were convicted for the terrorist activity. >> on that plot, it was under the 702, targeted against foreigners. some communication from this person in yemen back to the united states was picked up, and then they turned it over to you,

the fbi, to serve legal process on this person in the united states? >> that is correct. on a 702, it has to be a non- u.s. person, outside the united states, and linked to terrorism. >> would you say their intention to blow up the new york stock exchange was a serious plot? or is this something they kind of dreamed about, talking among their buddies? >> i think the jury considered it serious, as they were all convicted. >> what about the plot in october of 2007, that started, i think, with a 215? >> it was an investigation after 9/11 that the fbi conducted. we did not find any connection to terrorist activity. several years later, under the business record provision, the

nsa provided us a telephone number only in san diego that had indirect contact with an extremist outside the united states. we served legal process to identify who was the subscriber to this telephone number. we identified that individual. we were able to, under further investigation and electronic surveillance we applied specifically for the u.s. person with the fisa court -- we were able to identify co- conspirators, and we were able to disrupt this terrorist activity. >> repeat for me again what they were plotting to do? >> actually, he was providing the financial support to an overseas terrorist group that was a designated terrorist group by the united states. >> but there was some connection to suicide bombings, correct?

>> not in the example that i am citing here. >> i am sorry. the group in somalia which he was financing -- that is what >>ey do in somalia. correct. as you know as part of our classified hearings regarding the american presence in that area of the world. >> thank you. >> if i could hit a couple key points. it is over 50 cases. the reason i am not giving a specific number is, we want the rest of the community to make sure everything we have there is exactly right. if somebody says, not this 1 -- what we are finding out is, there are more. they will say, you missed these three or four. on the top of that packet, we will have a summary of all of these and a listing of those. i believe those numbers are things we can make public. we will try to give you the

numbers that apply to europe, as well as the ones that had a nexus in the united states. releasing more on the specific overseas cases, it is our concern that some of those, going into further detail with exactly what we did and how we did it, may prevent us with disrupting a future plot. that is a work in progress. our intent is to get that to the committee tomorrow, both for the senate and house. >> thank you. mr. thompson? >> thank you all for being here, for your testimony and your service to our country. the foregoing to hearing, has the fisa court ever rejected a case that has been brought before it? >> i believe the answer to that is yes, but i would defer that to the deputy attorney general. >> not often, but it does happen. >> mr. cole, what kinds of

records and data collected under the business records provision? >> there are a couple of different kinds. the shorthand required under the statute is the kind of records you could get with a grand jury subpoena. these are business records that already exist. it could be a contract. it could be something like that. in this instance, for this program, these are telephone records. it is just like your telephone bill. it will show a date the number was called, how long the call occurred, a number that called back to you. that is all it is, not even identifying who the people are. >> have you previously collected anything else under that authority? >> under the 215 authority? i am not sure, the long the -- beyond the 215 and the 702 that answers about what has and has

not and declassified can be talked about. >> you have said there were cases where there was data inadvertently or mistakenly collected, and subsequently destroyed. >> that is correct. >> and there actually has been data that has been inadvertently collect it, and it was destroyed? nothing else was done with it? >> that is correct. this is a very strict process. if you dial a phone number and collect a wrong number, when that is discovered, that is taking care of in that way. >> who does the checking? who determines if something has been inadvertently collected and decides it needs to be destroyed? >> i will refer to the nsa in the first instance, because they do a robust and vigorous check

internally themselves. after the fact, the departmentof justice, odni, and the inspector general make sure we understand all the uses. compliance problems are identified. they are given to the court, given to the congress, and fixed. >> i do not think i need anything more than that. general alexander, can you tell us what snowden meant during this chat thing he did when he said nsa provides congress with a special immunity to it surveillance? >> i have no idea. >> anybody else? >> i am not sure i understand the context of the special immunity. >> i do not either. >> we treat you with special respect. [laughter]

>> he said with a special immunity to it surveillance. >> i have no idea. it may be in terms of disseminating any information not in this program, that in any program we have. if we have to disseminate data to a u.s. member of congress, we are not allowed to say a name, unless it is valuable to one of the investigations. we cannot put out names of stuff. part of the minimization procedure protects you. >> i would simply say your status as u.s. persons gives gives you a special status, as we have described throughout this hearing. >> if you do figure that out, you will get that information to us? also, the president kind of suggested, i guess, in his television interview the other night, that the new york subway bomber could not have been or would not have been caught

without prism. is that true? >> yes, that is accurate. without the 702 tool, we would not have identified him. >> thank you. i have no further questions. i yield back the balance of my time. >> general alexander, which agency actually presents the package to the pfizer court for them to make their decision? >> it is the fbi. >> the fbi is part of the process. it goes over to the department of justice. >> the formal aspect of the statute allows the director of the fbi to make an application to the court. the justice department handles that process. we put all the paperwork

together. and it must be signed off on before it goes to the court by the attorney general, myself, or if we have a confirmed assistant attorney general in terms of the national security division, that person is authorized. but it has to be one of the three of us before it goes. >> and the court is a single judge? >> the judges sit kind of in rotation in the court, presiding over it. these are all article three judges with lifetime appointments. they have districts they deal with. they are selected by the chief justice to sit on the pfizer court for a period of time. >> i guess the crux of my question -- would there be a way that if you did not get the answer you wanted from a certain judge, could you go to another fisa court judge and ask for another opinion? >> i think that would be very

difficult to do, because the staff does a great deal of the prep work, and they are going to recognize when they have thrown something back. if you have not made changes to correct the deficiencies that cause them to throw it out, i guess is they will throw it back again. >> one of the things a lot of people do not understand, that i isink you have also discussed, the rita had document. a lot of focus has been made on the fact that, as my colleague mr. thompson said, the court is a rubber stamp, but they do have an opportunity to review the documents prior to rendering a decision. >> they do. it is by no means as a rubber stamp. they push back a lot. these are very thick applications that have a lot in them. and when they see anything that raises an issue, they will push back and say, we need more

information about this area, about that legal issue, about your facts in certain areas. this is by no means a rubber stamp. there is an enormous amount of work, and they are the ones to make sure that the privacy and civil liberties interests of united states citizens are honored. they are that bulwark in this process. they have to be satisfied. >> there has been some discussion this morning on the inadvertent violation of a court order, where data has been collected and then destroyed. has there ever been any disciplinary action taken on somebody who inadvertently violated an order? >> not that i am aware of. i think one of the statistics included in earlier comments was that in the history of this, there has never been found and intentional violation of any of the provisions of a court order, or any of the collection in that regard. so the nature of the kinds of anomalies that have existed were

technical errors or typographical errors, things of that nature, as opposed to anything remotely intentional. there would be, in those instances, no reason for discipline. there may be reason to make sure our systems are fixed so that a technical violation or technical error does not exist again, because we have identified it, but nothing intentional. >> an important part of the oversight process at the department of justice and the odni is, when compliance problems are identified, and the vast majority were self- identified. we go and look at it and say, are there changes that need to be made in the system so this kind of mistake does not happen again? it is a constantly improving process to prevent mistakes from occurring. >> thank you.

yield back. >> thank you, mr. chairman. general alexander, do you feel that this open hearing today in any way jeopardizes our national security? >> i do not think the hearing itself jeopardizes it. i think the damage was done in the release of the information. today, what we have the opportunity is, to where it makes sense, to provide additional information on the oversight, compliance, and statistics, without jeopardizing it. we are being careful to do that, and i appreciate what the committee has done on that. >> how many people were in the same position as snowden was as a systems manager, to have access to this information that could be damaging if released? >> there are system administrators throughout nsa and all our complexes around the

world. there is on the order of 1000 system administrators, people who actually run the networks, that have, in certain sections, that level of authority and ability to interface through the system. >> how many of those are outside contractors? >> the majority are contractors. as you may recall, about 12 or 13 years ago, as we tried to downsize our government workforce, we pushed more of our information technology workforce or system administrators to the contract arena. that is consistent across the intelligence community. >> i would argue that this conversation we are having now could have happened, unlike what you said, and perhaps we disagree also, general alexander that the erosion of trust, the misconceptions and

misunderstandings that resulted, and why one would assume that, when there is a thousand -- are there any more than a thousand, do you think? >> we are counting all those positions. we will get you an accurate number. >> some of this information would not have become public. the effort that has to convince the american public of the necessity of this program i think would suggest that we would have been better off having a discussion of the oversights, the legal framework, etc., up front, and how this could prevent another 9/11, and in fact 50 or so attacks. let me ask you this, mr. cole. you were talking about transparency, saying essentially that while the verizon phone records order looked bad on its face, there are court documents that talk about the legal rationale of what we are doing.

will you release those court opinions with the necessary reductions? if not, why? >> i am going to refer that over, because the classifying authority would be dni. >> we have been working for some time in trying to declassify opinions of the pfizer court. it has been a very difficult task. like most legal opinions, you have facts intermingled with legal discussions, and the facts frequently involve sensitive sources and methods, classified information. we have been discovering that when you remove all the information that needs to be classified, you are left with something that looks like swiss cheese and is not very comprehensible. having said that, i think as general alexander said, there is information in the public domain now. the director of national intelligence declassified certain information about these programs last week.

as a result, we are taking another look at these opinions to see whether there is now -- we can make a more comprehensible release of the opinions. the answer to that is, we are looking at that and would like to release into the public domain as much of this as we can without compromising national security. i thank general alexander. what kinds of records are collected? >> for nsa, the only records that are collected under business records 215 is this telephony data. >> will you collect more? >> this is the only thing we do. this gets into other authorities, but that is not ours. you are asking me now outside of nsa. >> 215 is a general provision

that allows the acquisition of business records if it is relevant to a national security investigation. that showing has to be made to the court to allow that subpoena to issue, that there is relevance and a connection. that could be any number of different kinds of records a business might maintain -- customer records, purchase orders, things of that nature. somebody buys materials that they could make an explosive out of, you could go to a company that sells those and get records of the purchase. things of that nature. e-mails would not be covered by business records in that regard. you would have to, under the electronic communications privacy act, get specific court authorization for e-mails that stored content. if you are going to be looking at them in real time while they are going, you are going to have a separate fisa court order. it would not be covered by the business records.

>> i will make sure one clear part on the system administrator. what you get access to is helping to run the network and the web servers on the network that are publicly available. to get to data, like the business records data we are talking about -- that is in an exceptionally controlled area. you would have to have specific iertificates to get into that. am not aware that snowden had any access to that. on reasonable suspicion numbers and what we are seeing -- i do not know of any inaccurate numbers that have occurred since 2009. there are rigorous controls we have from a technical perspective. once a number is considered approved, you put that number in and cannot make a mistake, because the system helps correct that. that is a technical control we put in there. >> i yield back.

>> thank you, gentlemen. mr. cole and mr. english went through a very extensive array of the oversight and internal controls associated with what is going on. in a business environment, sarbanes-oxley requires that companies go through their entire system to make sure that not only the details, the trees, work, but that the forest works as well. is there anybody who steps back and says, the goal is to protect privacy and our civil liberties, and we are doing the best we can? is there an internal control audit, so to speak, that looks at the system and says, we have got the waterfront covered? >> there are periodic reviews that i have described that audit everything that is done under both of these programs by both nsa and the department of justice, and the office of the director of national intelligence, and we report to the court and we report to congress.

all of that is done looking at the whole program at the same time. >> i understand that the various pieces work well and are designed to create that process, but is there an overall look at everything that is done, to say, we have got it all covered? and if we do not, where do those suggestions get embedded? have we had suggestions where we have said, we do not need to do that? >> there are at least two levels at which that takes place. by statute, within the office of the director of national intelligence, there is a civil liberties protection officer named alex joel, whose job it is to take exactly that kind of look at our programs, and make suggestions for the protection of civil liberties. outside of the intelligence

community -- >> and that person would have the requisite clearances? >> he is part of this audit process, his office. outside of the intelligence community, the president's civil liberties oversight board, which has five confirmed members, is also charged with looking at the impact of our programs on privacy and civil liberties. they also have full variances. they have the ability to get full visibility to the program. i have recently been briefed on these programs and are looking to make this kind of assessment. >> is that report public? it is the president's board. i suspect that since they are making a classified report, it would not be public. if it is unclassified, it is up to them. >> you mentioned minimization and a rolling five year window

of destruction on the business records. you used the word purge, get rid of, destroy. can you help us understand what that means? when i shredded piece piece of paper, that is one thing, but given the number of times you backup data -- can a citizen is an -- citizen figure that we have deleted all of these things we are supposed to delete? >> i believe they can. we have a fairly comprehensive system at the nsa. whenever we collect anything, under this authority or some other, we bind to that communication how we got it, where we got it, what authority we got it under, so we know whether we can retain it. if it is fisa data we talked about, after the expiration of five years, it is automatically taken out of the system, literally deleted from the system. >> it is mechanically overwritten, and backup copies are done away with?

>> yes, sir. it gets fairly complicated very quickly, will we have systems of record our architecture, and if the data aliment has the right to exist, it is attributable to one of those. we have purge lists, if we were required to purge something. that item would show up explicitly on that list, and we regularly run that against our data sets to make sure we have double checked that things that should be purged have been purged. >> any indication that the fisa court has the resources necessary to run its oversight piece? >> obviously, the courts are suffering under sequestration like everybody else, so i do not know what is going to hit them as we go forward.

>> gentlemen, i want to thank you all for your testimony here today, and for your service to our country. as a member of the committee, i have been briefed on the program, and i know the extent of due diligence you have gone through to make sure this is done right. i think it is important this discussion is being had this morning, and hopefully it will give greater confidence to the american people that all the agencies involved have dotted their i's and cross their t's. it is helpful that we had a discussion about the fisa court today, and how detailed the requests have to be before they get approval. i think it is made clear that

these are not just one page documents presented to a fisa judge and rubberstamped. it goes through excessive due diligence, before it even gets to the point the judge sees it. obviously, if all criteria have been met, it gets approved. if the criteria have not been met, it will be rejected. i will not belabor that point. that has been a fruitful discussion. but can you talk further about the role of the ig, and go into that process a little more, so that the amount of report the ig does once a query has been made, in terms of the range of queries that have been made -- i think that would be important to clarify. >> i will start with that and then defer to the odni and deputy attorney general for some

follow-up will stop any analyst who wants to perform a query, this authority or any other, essentially has a two-person control. they would determine whether this query should be applied, and there is somebody who applies oversight will stop under the metadata records captured by the program, there is a very special court-defined process by which that is done. those are all subject to the ig, the inspector general, review on a general basis, such that we can look at the procedures as defined, the procedures as executed, reconcile the two, and make sure that is done exactly right. there are periodic reports the ig has to produce, and they are faithfully reported. i think the real checks and balances have been between nsa, the department of justice, the director of national

intelligence. the department of defense enters that as well. they have intelligence oversight mechanisms. between those components, rigorous oversight varies in what they look for. the fisa is a particularly rigorous authority, but they all have checks and balances that transcend nsa. likes if i can add to that, i refer you to a recent review by the doj inspector general on the 702 program that was highly complementary of the checks and balances that were in place. >> let me turn my attention now to programs that primarily target non-u.s. persons. this is probably a question for mr. joyce. you have said that if a u.s. person overseas, or a non-u.s. person living in the united states -- if we become aware that they may be involved in terrorist activity, they are served process. could you go into detail about how that happens, and how a

court is involved if we become aware a u.s. person is involved? >> i think either maybe i misspoke or you misspoke. we are not looking at all at u.s. persons. the 702 is anyone outside the united states. even a u.s. person outside the united states is not included in the coverage. it is a non-u.s. person outside the united states, and three different criteria go through. one of those links is terrorism. specifically, only certain individuals are targeted. those linked to terrorism. on numerous occasions, as i have outlined in some examples, individuals outside of the united states were discovered communicating with someone inside the united states. that is being tipped from the nsa. we then go through the legal process here, the fbi does, regarding that u.s. person. we have to serve what is called a national security letter, much like a subpoena. if we want to pursue electronic surveillance, we have to make a specific application regarding that person with the fisa court

here. >> thank you very much. i yield back. >> just to follow on and to clarify, because i want to make sure everything we say is exactly right -- as sean said, the nsa may not target phone calls or e-mails of any u.s. person anywhere in the world without individualized court orders. >> thank you. >> that is unimportant point we cannot make enough. >> thank you, mr. chairman. general alexander and steam, thank you for helping us understand in so many closed sessions, and hopefully helping

the nation understand, what we are doing, why we are doing it, and how we are doing it. i want to focus more on 702, if we could. general alexander, could you explain what happens if a target of surveillance is communicating with a u.s. person in the united states? >> under 702, i think the best case is someone that sean joyce made. if we are tracking a known terrorist in another country -- pakistan, yemen, or someplace -- and we see them communicating with someone in the united states, focused on doing something in the united states, we tipped that to the fbi. our job is to identify that, see the nexus of it. it could be in another country. sometimes, we would see somebody in one of those countries planning something in europe or elsewhere. we would share that. when it comes into the united

states, our job and this -- our job ends. we are outside, and we provide it to the inside fbi, and they go from there. they will get the process for getting additional information to see if this is a lead worth following. >> what does the government have to do if it wants to target a u.s. person under fisa, when they are located abroad, when they are not here? what would be the process for the government? >> that would be the full package, going to the fisa court, identifying that person, identifying the probable cause to believe that person is involved in terrorism or foreign intelligence activities, and indicating that we have the request to the court to allow us

to intercept their communications, because we have made the showing that they are involved in terrorist or foreign intelligence activities. we have to make a formal application, targeting that person specifically, what are they are inside or outside the united states. >> if i might add, that could not be done under 702. there is a separate section of the foreign intelligence surveillance attack that would allow that, that it would not be doable under 702. >> what if you want to monitor the within the united states? >> again, a different provision of fisa, but we would have to show that person is, was probable cause, involved in foreign terrorist activities or foreign intelligence activities on behalf of a foreign power. we have to lay out to the court all those facts, to get court permission to target that person.

>> i want to reemphasize that. you have to specifically go to the fisa court and make your case as to why this information is necessary to be accessed? >> that is correct. >> and without that, you have no authority and cannot do it and do not do it? >> that is correct. >> thank you. i yield back, mr. chairman. >> thank you very much, mr. schiff. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you gentlemen for your work. on the business records program, the general fisa court order allows you to get the metadata from the communications providers. then, when there are reasonable facts, you can go and see if one of the numbers has a match in

the metadata. on those 300 or so occasions when you do that? -- when you do that, does that require separate court approval, or does the general fisa court order allowing you, when your analysts have the facts, to make that query? >> we do not have to get separate court appearance for each query. the court sets out the standard that must be met in order to make the query in its order, and that is in the primary order. that is what we ought it in a very robust way, in number of different facets through the executive branch, and give it to the court and give it to the congress. we are given the 90 days with these parameters and restrictions to access it. we do not go back to the court each time. >> and does the court scrutinize, after you present back to the court, these are the occasions where we found these

facts? do they scrutinize your basis for conducting those queries? >> yes, they do. >> general alexander, i raised this in closed session, but would like to raise it publicly as well. what are the prospects for changing the program, such that rather than the government acquiring the vast amounts of metadata, the telecommunications companies retain the metadata, and only on the 300 or so occasions where it needs to be queried, you are querying the telecommunications providers for whether it they have those business records related to a

reasonable, articulate double -- articulable connection to a foreign intelligence agency? fax we are looking at the architectural framework of how we do this program, and the advantages and disadvantages of doing each one. each case, if you leave it at the service providers, you have a separate set of issues in terms of how you get the information and how you go back and follow it on. and the legal authority for them to compel them to keep these records for a certain time. what we are doing is, we are going to look at that, come back to the director of national intelligence, the administration, and you all, and give you recommendations for both the house and the senate. we want to do it right. i think, just to set expectations, the concern is speed in crisis. >> i would strongly encourage us to investigate that potential restructuring, even though there may be attendant inefficiencies with it. i think the american people may be much more comfortable with the telecommunications companies retaining those business

records, that metadata, even though the government does not query it except on very rare occasions. >> it may be something like that that we bring back and look at. we are going to look at that. we have already committed to doing that, and we will do that and go through all the details of that. >> this week, i am going to be introducing the house companion to the bipartisan markley bill that would require disclosure of certain fisa court opinions, in a form that does not impair our national security. i recognize the difficulty that you described earlier in making sure those opinions are generated in a way that does not compromise the programs. you mentioned that you are doing

a review, and i know one has been going on for some time, in light of how much of the programs have now been declassified. how soon do you think you will be able to get back to us about when you can declassify some court opinions? >> i am hesitant to answer any question that begins how soon, partly because there are a lot of agencies with equities in this. there is a lot else going on in this area. my time has not been quite as free to address this topic as i would like to over the last week and a half. i can tell you that i have asked my staff to work with the other agencies involved to try to track this along as quickly as possible. we are trying to identify opinions where we think there is the greatest public interest in having them declassified. >> i am encouraged that, beyond the two programs at issue here, to the degree you can declassify other fisa court opinions, i

think it is in the public interest. >> i wanted to correct a little bit one of the things i said. this does not review every reasonable articulable suspicion determination. they are given reports every 30 days in the aggregate, and if there are compliance issues, and we find that was not complied properly, that is reported separately to the court. >> is there a follow-up? >> thank you. i want to make sure i understood what you just said. a prior court approval is not necessary for a specific query, but when you report back to the court about how the order has been implemented, you do set out those cases where you found reasonable articulable facts and made a query. do you set those out with specificity, or do you just say, on 15 occasions, we made a

query? >> it is more the latter, the aggregate number where we have made a query. if there are problems that have been discovered, we report with specificity those problems. >> it might be worth providing the basis of the reasonable facts, and having the court review those as a further check and balance. >> my understanding is that every access is already preapproved. the way you get into the system is court approved. >> that is correct. the court sets out the standards which have to be applied to allow us to make the query in the first place. the implementation of that standard is reviewed by nsa internally at several levels before the actual implementation is done. it is reviewed by the department of justice. it is reviewed by the office of the director of national intelligence.

it is reviewed by the inspector general for the national security agency. there are numerous levels of review of the application of this. >> if they do not follow the court-approved process, that would be a variation that would have to be reported to the court? >> that is correct. >> but you are meeting the court-approved process with every query? >> that is correct. >> every one of those queries is audited. those are all reviewed by the department of justice. those are the reviews we spoke about at 30 and 90 days. there is a very specific focus on those we believe are attributable to u.s. persons, despite the fact that we do not know the identities of those persons. the court gets all of those reports. >> all of those internal checks are valuable, but they are still internal checks, and it might be worthwhile having the court at least after-the-fact review those determinations. tank you, mr. chairman.

>> thank you, mr. chairman. what has happened here is that the totality of many problems within the executive branch has now tarnished the fine folks at the nsa and the cia. i made a short list here. right after benghazi, there were lies. fast and periods, missing documents, dead americans, and that mexican citizens. you at least have to into or got phone records from ap reporters, fox news reporters, including from the house gallery within this building. last week, as you know, ag oh is being accused by the judiciary committee a possibly lying to the committee. -- ag holder is being accused by the judiciary committee of possibly lying. and on friday, they tried to release documents to make this go away, the release of personal data from u.s. citizens from the irs.

now, i understand when my constituents ask me, if the irs is leaking personal data -- general alexander, this question is for you. how do i know for sure that the nsa and people trying to protect this country are not leaking data? mr. rogers asked the question about -- how do we know that someone from the white house cannot turn a switch and begin to listen to their phone conversations? general, i think if you could clarify the difference in what the people that are trying to protect this country are doing, and what they go through, the rigorous standards, i think it would help fix this mess for the american people. >> thank you, congressman.

i think the key facts are -- when we disseminate data, everything we disseminate, and all the queries made into the database, are 100% auditable. they are audited by not only the analyst doing the job, but the overseers that look and see, did he do that right, or did she do that right? in every case we have seen so far, we have not seen one of our analysts will fully do something wrong, like you just said. that is where disciplinary action would come in. what i have to underwrite is when somebody makes an honest mistake. these are good people. if they transpose 2 letters in typing something in, that is an honest mistake. we go back and say, how can we fix it?

the technical controls we are adding in help fix that. it is our intent to do this exactly right. in that, one of the things we have is tremendous training programs for our people that they go through, how to protect u.s. data, how to interface with the business records of fisa. the records under 702. everyone, including myself, at nsa, has to go through that training to ensure we do that right, and we take that very seriously. another thing that is sometimes confused here is that, then they are getting everybody else in the world? but our approach is foreign intelligence. it is the same thing in europe. we are not interested in -- for one, we do not have the time. and ours is to protect our country and our allies. anything you want to add to that? >> i think that is exactly right. people at the nsa take an oath to the constitution, not to some particular mission, but to the entirety of the constitution. it covers national security and the protection of civil liberties. there is no distinction for us. they are all important. >> i want to switch gears, and perhaps this is a good question

for mr. joyce. i find it really odd that right before the chinese president comes to this country, all these leaks happen and this guy has fled to hong kong, snowden. i am concerned with the information you presented last week, that this is going to be the largest lake in american history, and there is probably more to come out. can you explain the seriousness of this leak? said said earlier that it damaged national security. can you go into a few of the specifics? >> no. really, i can comment very little. it is an ongoing criminal investigation. as we have all seen, these are egregious leaks. we are revealing, in front of you today, methods and

techniques. i have told you the examples i gave you, how important they have been. the first core al qaeda plot to attack the united states post- 9/11, we used one of these programs. a plot to bomb the new york stock exchange -- we used one of these programs. here we are now, talking about this in front of the world. >> it also affects our partnership with our allies. and with industry. industry is trying to do the right thing, and they are compelled by the courts to do it, and we use this to also protect our allies and interests abroad. i think the way it has come out and the way it looks is that we are willfully doing something wrong, when in fact we are using the courts, congress, and the administration to make sure everything we do is exactly

right. >> just in closing, we know from the report that came out that other governments are busy doing this and expanding their cyber warfare techniques. it is so vital, as the chairman has pointed out many times, for the work you are doing, how important that is to not only today's security, but tomorrow's security. thank you for your service, general. i yield back. >> i will dispute that other governments do it in any way close to having any oversight whatsoever of their intelligence gathering programs. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i also want to thank all of our witnesses today for your service to this country, and for helping to maintain our national security. i would like to talk a little bit about the security practices. we have spent a lot of time

explaining to the american people the various levels of complexity in which you have judicial oversight and congressional oversight. how did this happen? how did a relatively low level administrator, a systems administrator, i think you said, have classified information, and is it an acceptable risk? i get that you have a thousand or so system administrators. it is extremely frightening that you would go through such measures to do the balancing act internally to make sure we are balancing protection and security and privacy, and yet internally, in your own controls, there are system administrators that can go rogue. is it acceptable risk? how did it happen? and is there oversight to these >> there is oversight. we are looking at where that broke down and what happened. is inthat is going to be part ofyou and

ithe investigation we are working with the fbi on. ini would come back to 9/11. an aone of the key things was, we andwent from the need to know to the need to share. in this case, what the system administrator had access to is what we will call the public web forms that nsa operates. these are the things that talk about how we do our business, not what has been collected as results of that. nor does he give insight into the training and certification process and accreditation folks go through to actually do this. those are in separate programs that require other certificates to get into. the intelligence community looked at a new information technology environment that reduces the number of system administrators. if we could jump to that immediately, i think that would get us a much more secure

environment, and would reduce this set of problems. it is something the dni is leading and we are supporting. i think that is absolutely vital to get to. there are mechanisms we can use there. >> snowden did not have the certificates necessary? >> each set of data we would have -- let's take business records, fisa. you have to have specific certificates, because this is a court. that would be extremely difficult for him to do. others require certificates to be working in this area to have that. he would have to get one of those certificates to enter that area. >> i would encourage us to

figure out a way that we can declassify more information. i thank you for giving us two additional examples of terrorist attacks we have thwarted because of these programs, but i think that providing us with as much information as you can on court opinions, how that goes, would help the american public demystify what we are doing. the additional examples you gave today were great, but i also am concerned that we have contractors doing -- i get that there was a move at some point to not have as many government employees, and we sort of outsourced it. but given the sensitivity of the information and the access, even for relatively low level employees, do you see that being a problem, and how do we go about fixing it?

>> so we do have significant concerns in this area, and it is something we need to look at. the mistakes of one contractor should not tarnish all the contractors because they do great work for our nation as well. you raised two great points that i think we will look at. one, how do we provide the oversight. i talked to our technology director about the two-person control for system administrators, and we are going to implement that. i think in terms of what we release to the public, i am for releasing as much as we can, but i want to weigh that with our national security. and i think that's what you expect us, and what the american people expect from us. i need to make sure on this side that what we do is exactly right. i think how we minimize data, how we run this program, those

types of things, that's why chris went through those great details. i think those are things that the american people should know. what they find out is, look at the oversight, the compliance, and the training that our people are going through. this is huge. this isn't some rogue operation that a group of guys at nsa are running. this is oversight by the committees, the courts, the administration, and a 100% auditable process. that's extraordinary oversight. i think when the american people look at that, they would say, wow, for less than 300 selectors, that amount of oversight, and that's what we have jointly agreed to do. i think that's tremendous. >> i do, too. i applaud the efforts. i think given the nature of this leak, you know, we don't want our efforts to be for naught, if, in fact, what happens is

that the leaks get the american people so concerned, that we roll back on these programs and therefore increase our vulnerability as a nation. that's not in anyone's best interests. going back to sort of the difference between private contractors and federal employees, is there a different security clearance? >> same security clearance. >> thank you. i yield the rest my time. >> thank you, mr. chairman. as mr. nunez had mentioned about some of the other things that have come out about leaks and so forth, because my constituents asked me the difference in maybe what the attorney general did in going to the court to -- on the

rosen case, saying he was an unindicted co-conspiritor, because that was about a leak also. what type of review did you all go over before you asked for those phones to be tapped and to make it perfectly clear that was not in a fisa court? is that correct? >> number one, that was not a fisa court. in the rosen case, there were no phones being tapped. it was just to acquire a couple of e-mails. and there is a very, very robust system. it is set out in regulations that the department of justice follows, of the kinds of scrubbing and review that must be done before any subpoena like that can be issued. you have to exhaust all other

avenues. you have to make sure the information you are looking at is truly necessary to be able to move the investigation forward. there are restrictions on what can be done with the information, and it goes through a very long process of review from the u.s. attorney's office through the united states attorney, him or herself, into usually the criminal division of the justice department, through the assistant attorney general of the criminal division, through the deputy attorney general's office, and ultimately to the attorney general signing it. it gets a lot of review before that's done under the criteria that we have in our guidelines

in our c.f.r. >> so the doj didn't, because of it being a security leak, the doj didn't contact the fbi or the nsa? there was no coordination with that, it was strictly a doj criminal investigation? >> but the fbi does criminal investigations with the department of justice, and they were contacted in that regard. it was not part of the fisa process. it did not involve the nsa. >> and i think that's what we need to be clear of. it was not part of the fisa process. that was a lot more detailed and a lot more scrutinized as far as getting information than what this was. is that correct? >> well, they are both very detailed and very scrutinized processes. they have different aspects to them. they are both very unusually detailed and scrutinized, both of those processes. >> thank you. and general, going back to what

ms. sewell had asked about what the difference is of the clearance you would have with a contractor or government employee, when you have a thousand different government contractors, i know from my experience after having one of my staff go through a security clearance, it is a pretty detailed operation. i know this person had previously worked for the cia. had there been additional clearance given to him when he became a contractor after he left the employ of the cia? >> no additional clearance. he had what's necessary to work at nsa or one of our facilities, a top secret special intelligence clearance. that goes through a series of processes and reviews. the director of national intelligence is looking at those processes to make sure those are all correct. he's stated he is taking that on. we support that objective. to work at nsa, whether you are a contractor, government

civilian, you have to have that same level of clearance. >> does it bother you that this gentleman had only been there for a short period of time? is there any oversight or review or whatever of the individuals that are carrying out this work? is there any type of probation time or anything? because, you know, it seems he was there a very short period of time. >> so he had workled in a couple of positions. he had just moved into the booz allen position, but he had been in a technology position in the 12 months prior to that. he had actually been there 15 months. he had moved from one contract to another. >> would he have been familiar with these programs at his previous job? >> yes. and i believe going out on what

we call the public classified web service to help you understand parts of nsa, that he took parts of that and -- i can go into more detail. >> at one point when you say, would he have become familiar with these programs, i think one of the problems is, he wasn't nearly as familiar with these programs as he thought he was. this is one of those cases where someone sees a small corner of a program and thinks it gives them insight into the whole program. >> thank you. >> mr. chairman, i do like to thank the panel for appearing today and your service. i think i have been saying to each of you, i have been heartened by competence of your agencies, and the agencies with which you work. i have seen nothing in the week and a half that we have discussed this that these programs are operating in anyway

outside the law, and i would add the controls in place in these programs seem solid. i will also say that i don't know that there is any way to do oversight without a posture of skepticism on the part of the overseers, so i hope you will take my observations and questions in that spirit. i would like to limit my questions purely to section 215 in the verizon disclosures. they, quite frankly, trouble me. they trouble me because of the brth and the scope of the information collected. they trouble me because i think this is historically unprecedent in the extent of the data that is being collected on potentially all american citizens, and the controls which you have laid out for us notwithstanding, i think that's new for this country. we know that when a capability exists, there is a potential for abuse. mr. nunez ran through a lot of issues going back to j. edgar hoover to nixon to concerns

around the irs -- if a capability exists, it will be abused. this individual, whose resume would make it unlikely he would get an unpaid internship in my office, he had access to some of the most sensitive information that we have, and someone like him could have had access to phone numbers. we all know with a phone number and google you can get a name pretty quickly. he could have made comments about the ceo of google making phone calls or anything, really, information that we hold to be private. so i guess i have two questions. where do we draw the line? in other words, so long as the

information is not information to which i have a reasonable expectation of privacy under section 215 powers, where do we draw the line? could you, for example, get video data? as i walk around washington, i suppose you could reconstruct my day with video captured on third party cameras. could you keep that in a way that is analogous to phone numbers? again, with all the careful guards around, could you not reconstruct my day? i'm trying to identify where the line is. >> i think the real issue is, how it is accessed, what it can be used for. >> i am stipulating that that system, even though we know it is not perfect, i'm stipulating that that system is perfect. i'm asking, where is the limit as to what you can keep in the tank? >> i think some of it is a matter for the united states

congress to decide as policy matters and the legislating that you do surrounding these acts and where you are going to draw those lines. certainly the courts have looked at this and determined that under the statutes there is a relevance requirement. they are not just saying out of whole cloth you are allowed to gather these things, have you to look at it all together. they are only saying that you can gather this volume unled these circumstances under these restrictions with knees controls without those circumstances and controls and restrictions the court may well not have approved the orders under 215 to allow that collection to take place. so you can't separate them out one from the other and say just the acquisition what can we do? because the acquisition comes together with the restrictions on access. >> and if those restrictions and controls are adequate, there is theoretically no restriction on your ability to store information on anything for

which i do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy? >> i will refer back to nsa's textbooks for that. >> i do have one more specific question. >> so your question is, could someone get your number and see you were at a bar last night? the answer is no. only 22 people can approve a reasonable, articulable suspiction on a phone number. you would have to have one of those 22 break the law. then you have to have someone go in and break a law, and the system is 100% auditable. so they will be caught. there is no way to change that. on that system, whoever did that would have broken the law.

that would be willful, and then that person would be found by the court to be in violation of a court order, and that's much more serious. we have never had that happen. >> thank you. i appreciate that. i think it is really important that we explore these bright lines about what you can keep and what you can't. again, i don't see anything about the control systems. i do have one quick question, if the chairman will indulge me. general, this is something i ask you, and something i asked you in closed session. obviously we are weighing privacy against security. i think when we are weighing this, it is important we understand the national security benefit. i limit myself to 215 here. 50 episodes. i don't think it is adequate to say that 702 and 215 authorities contributed to our preventing 50 episodes. i think it is really essential that you grade the importance of that contribution. the question i asked you, and

you can answer now or i would really like to get into this. how many of those 50 episodes would have occurred but for your ability to use the section 215 authorities as disclosed in the verizon situation? how essential -- not just contributing to it, but how essential are these authorities for stopping which attacks? >> for clarity, over 50. and in 90% of those cases, faa 702 contributed. and in 50% i believe they were critical. >> 702. >> 702. and shifting to the business ad advisor, and i'll do mutt and jeff here. i'm not sure which one i have. over 10 were domestic. >> and how many? and of the 10, how many were critical. did i say that wrong? >> yes. just slightly over 10. and i dont' want to pin that

number until the community verifies it. so just over 10 had a domestic nexus. so business records could only apply to those. the ones in other countries could not apply. the data sat there and doesn't come into the u.s. if we look at that, the vast majority of those had a contribution by business record. so i think we have to be careful and say we don't take the whole world and say you only did those in the united states and some large majority of that. i do think this, going back to 911, we didn't have the ability to connect the dots. from my perspective, what we are doing here, with the civil liberties and bringing people together does help connect those dots. >> if i could just -- i'm out of time. i think this point is important. if my constituents are representative of the broader

american public, they are more familiar with the 215 collecting of american data than foreign data. so i would appreciate if you would elucidate for us how many stopped terrorist attacks was 215 essential to? >> i think you ask an impossible question. what i can say is post 9/11 i don't recognize the fbi from when i came in. our mission is to stop terrorism before it starts in the united states. i can tell you every tool we use is essential and vital. the tools we have outlined today have been valuable to stopping some of those plots. you ask, how can you put value on an american life, and i can tell you, it's priceless. >> thank you.

>> thank you, mr. chair, for holding this important hearing today. i just have a series of short questions. my first is, you mentioned earlier in your testimony that data must be destroyed within five years of acquisition. i believe that's been the section 215 phone records. >> it is destroyed when it reaches five years of age. >> and how long do the phone companies on their own maintain data? >> that varies. they don't hold the data for the benefit of the government, they hold it for their own business and internal processes. i don't know the specifics. i know it is variable. it arranges from six to 18 months. the data they hold is again useful for their purposes, not necessarily the government's. >> my question is, did the fisa orders give the government a choice in whether to participate in the nsa records or the prison program? was this voluntary compliance on the part of these companies? >> no, these are court orders.

they require their complaince with the terms of the court order. >> let me just, for the record, state, is nsa spying today or have you spied on american citizens? >> we do not target u.s. persons anywhere in the world without a specific court warrant. >> and does the nsa listen to the phone calls of american citizens? >> we do not target or listen to the telephone calls of u.s. persons under the targeting without a specific court warrant. >> does the nsa read the e-mails of american sentence? >> same answer, ma'am. >> does the nsa read the text messages? >> not without a specific warrant anywhere on the earth. >> has the nsa ever tracked any political enemies of the administration, whether it is a republican administration or democrat administration?

you said you are 100% auditable, so you would know the answer to this question. have you ever tracked the political enemies of an administration? >> in my time at the nsa, no ma'am. >> does the government keep video data? does the government have a data base with video data tracking the movements of the american people? sorry, them. microphone isn't on. >> nsa does not hold such data. >> i think those are held by individuals in boston. >> does the federal government have a video data base tracking the where abouts of the american people? >> the fbi does not have such a database, nor am i aware of one.

>> does the american government have a data base that has the gps location whereabouts of americans, whether by our cell phones or other tracking device? is there a known database? >> nsa does not hold such a data base. >> does the nsa have a data base that you maintain that holds the content of american phone calls? do you have recordings of all of our calls? so if we're making phone calls is there a national database that has the content of our calls? >> we're not allowed to do that, nor do we do that unless we have a court order to do that. and it would be only in specific cases, and almost always that would be an fbi leak, not ours. >> do we maintain a data base of all e-mails that have ever been sent by the american people? >> no. no, we do not. >> is there a database that maintains the text messages of all americans? >> none that i know of, and none

at n.s.a. >> and i think what you have told this committee today is that the problem is not with the nsa, that it's trying to keep the american people safe. you told us you have a 100% auditable system with oversight from the courts and congress, it seems to me that a person that worked within the system, that broke laws, and who chose to declassify highly sensitive classified information, it seems to me that's where our focus should be on how there could be a betrayal of trust, and how a traitor could do something like this to the american people. it seems to me that's where our focus must be in how we can prevent something like that from ever happening again. let me ask you a question. how damaging is this to the security of the american people that this trust was violated? >> i think it was significant and irreversible damage to this nation. >> has it helped our enemies?

>> i believe it has, and i believe it will hurt us and our allies. >> i yield back, mr. chairman. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank the panel. one of the things about being so low on the totem pole here is, all the questions i would like to ask have been asked. i am fortunate in that a lot of the questions were very poignant. i hope the american people and those in the room have learned a lot about what happened here and learned a lot about the people on the panel. i can specifically say, general alexander, in my time on the intelligence committee, i have more respect for you. i am glad you are the one up there testifying, so that the

american people can see despite what is being portrayed that there is no one is better to articulate what is happening. and i will ask a couple basic questions that might help clear some things up. mr. cole, you talked about how four amendment is applicable, the patriot act, maryland v. smith, etc., and then we heard how to look at the data under 215 there has to be specific suspicion that is presented to a court, and that court is not a rubber stamp in allowing us to

basically look at metadata which is strictly phone records. one of the problems i think people have out there is that when it is so specific and only a number of people are able to articulate who we should be looking at, and you hear this number of "millions" from verizon, can you help clear that up? >> certainly. as we said, we don't give the reasonable suspicion to the court ahead of time. they set out the standards for us to use. but the analogy, and i have heard it used several times, if you are looking for a needle in the haystack, you have to get the haystack first. that's why we have the ability under court order to acquire all of that data. we don't get to use all of that data necessarily. that is the next step.

which is you have to be able to determine that there is reasonable, articulable suspicion to actually use that data. so if we want to find there's a phone number we believe is connected with terrorist organizations and terrorist activity, we need to have the rest of the haystack, all the other numbers, to find out which one it was in contact with. and as you heard mr. enqvist say, it is difficult toll do this because we do have standards that have to be met before we can make use of that data. so while it is collected, it is used sparingly. >> did you or anyone you know break the law to obtain this data? >> i am aware of no one who has broken the law in obtaining this data. there are other issues with the leaks that have gone on here. >> based on everything we have heard today, do you see any

problems with 702 or 215 that you think should be changed by this body? >> not right now. but this is something we agreed we would look at, especially the structure of how we would do it. we are looking at all of the key points. what we have to bring back to you is the agility. how we do it in the oversight. are there other ways we can do this? but at the end of the day, we need these tools, and we have to from any perspective having this body of congress and the administration do oversight, the american people would agree that what we are doing is exactly the right way. those are the steps. we will go back and look at the entire architecture. that is a commit that f.b.i. and the administration has made

to this committee. >> final question. what is next from mr. snoweden that we can expect. >> justice. >> i yield back. >> thank you all for being here today. this has been a great hearing. i think the american people have had a chance to hear from folks executing this program in a real well, and they will have a choice to believe the general or a fell on. o me there is an easy answer to that. some say the war on terror is winding down. these were created to counter the terrorist threat for those of us overseas and here in the states. general alexander, do you thick these perhaps are as much needed today as we were in the aftermath of 9-1-1. >> i do. >> and i do, too.

the environment has become more challenging. the think the more tools you have to be able to fight terrorism, the more we are going to be able to protect the american people. >> thank. we have talked a lot about the statutory basis and the process that goes with it. i want to talk a minute about the constitutional boundaries and where they are. plain article iii, just old article three judges, lifetime tenure, confirmed by the senate, nominated by the president. they have the same power and restrictions as all article iii judges? >> that is correct. >> we have article ii before us and article i oversight taking place. i want to talk about article i. this are not members talk about they didn't know about these perhaps. can you talk about the briefings that you have provided for members of congress both recently and as

is set of laws was -- were developed? >> 702 was recently reaument . sed -- re-authorized in 2012 we made a series of presentations across the hill some number of times and talked in very specific detail at classified level about the set-up of those perhaps, the controls and the success of those programs. the re-authorization of section 215 of the patriot act came earlier than that, but there was a similar set of briefings along those lines. we welcome all congressmen and senators to come to the n.s.a. and we will brief you. have taken us up on

that offer. >> do you have something to add, general? >> that is exactly right. any place any time we can help, we will do it. >> i appreciate that. i have been on the committee a short time. i learned about these perhaps actually before i came on the committee, so i know that members outside of this committee also had access to the information. i think that is incredibly important as committee oversight members, it is one thing, but all members of congress understand the scope of these programs. i appreciate the fact that you have continued to offer that assistance for all of us. a couple of clean up details. general alexander, from the data collection, can you figure out the location of a person who made a particular phone cull? >> not beyond the area code. >> do you have any information about signal strength? i have seen articles that you have that? >> no, we don't have that in the database. >> and lastly, you made a reference to 702. you talked about it being a restriction on article 2-30, not an expansion.

article ii, presidents of both parties believed they had the powers exercised under 702 long before the authority was granted. have youed used 702 as a restriction on article ii? >> yes. >> mr. chairman, i yield back. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to make this brief. i want to thank all the witnesses for their testimony, for your service and all you have done to strengthen and maintain this program. my question, general alexander to you and perhaps others, several times in your testimony you referenced 9/11. i recall at september 11 there was almost a loud challenge to the intelligence community to do a better job of connecting the dots, be more aggressive, be more forward-thinking, try to anticipate what is going to happen, all the cliches we

heard at the time. very ee it, this is a legitimate and legal response to that question. i would ask you, general alexander, and you, mr. joyce, after september 11 where there was a phone interception from yemen that allowed you to foil he new york stock exchange plot. could both of you explain how the attack could have been prevented or if you believe it could have been prevented. >> i don't know if the attack could have been prevented. what i can tell you is that is a tool not available to us at the time of 9/11. when there was a call made from yemen to kalid, we did not have the track that call. now things may have been different, and we will never

know that, unfortunately. that is the tool we are talking about today that we did not have at the time of 9/11. moving forward, as you mentioned, about the stock exchange. here we have a similar thing, except this was under the 702 program where n.s.a. tipped to us that a known extremist in yemen was talking or conversing with an individual inside the united states we later identify . kalid we were able to find him in kansas city and able to identify two additional conspirators. they were actually in the initial stages of plotting to bomb the new york stock exchange. to really summarize, as i mentioned before, all of these tools are important. we should have this dialogue. we should all be looking for ways, as you said, thinking

outside the box of how to do our business. but i sit before you today humbly and say these tools have helped also. >> general alexander? midauer terrorist from cassel that was on american airlines flight 77 that crashed into the pentagon. what we don't know is the phone call going on between yemen and there, whether we would have had reasonable suspicion standards. assuming we did, if we had the business records database and searched on that yemen number and saw it was talking to someone in cassel, we could have tipped that to the f.b.i. another step, and this is an assumption, but let me play this out because we will never be able to redo all the physician from 9/11. this is why this was put in, to

help that. ideally, he would have been able to find the other three teams in the states and/or one in germany or some other place. so the ability to use the metta data would have allowed us, we believe, to see some. now it is hypothetical. there are some conditions we would have to put on there. you would have this or that right, but we didn't have that ability. we couldn't connect the dots because we didn't have the dots. we have one more tool to help us work together as a team to help us stop future attacks. as sean has laid out, when you look at this, new york city, too, and others frrks my perspective those would have been significant events for our nation. i think what we have jointly done with congress is help set this program up correctly.

>> in your opening statement you said that you would rather be testifying here today on this issuing rather than exchange why another 9/11 happened. i want to commend you you for your service, and i want to thank all of you for the effort that was done to prevent that attack. i yield back. >> a couple of clarifying things to wrap it up. mr. joyce, you have been in the f.b.i. for 26 years. you have conducted criminal investigations as well. sometimes you get a simple tip that leads to a broader investigation, is that correct? >> that is correct, chairman. >> and so without that initial tip you may not have found some of the other weighty evidence that happened subsequent to that tip, is that correct? >> absolutely. >> so in the case in 2007, the very fact that under the business 215 records there was a simple tip that was we have someone that is known, with

ties to al qaeda's east african network calling a phone number in san diego. that is really all you got, was a phone number in san diego, is that correct? >> that is correct. >> and according to the unclassified report, that tip ultimately led to the f.b.i.'s opening of a full investigation that resulted in the february 2013 conviction, is that correct? >> yes, it is, chairman. >> so without that first tip you weren't up on his electronics communications, he was not a subject of any investigation prior to that tip from the national security agency? >> actually he was the subject of a prior investigation several years earlier that was closed because we could not find any connection to terrorism. then if we did not have the tip from n.s.a., we would not have been able to reopen the case. >> but at the time you weren't investigating him? >> absolutely not. >> and when they dipped that number into the business

records, the preserved business records from the court order. they dipped a phone number and a phone number came out in san diego, did you know who that person was when they gave you that number? >> no, we had to serve legal process to identify the user, and we had to corroborate it. >> when you went up on electronic surveillance, you used a court order or a warrant? >> that is correct. >> we uses a fisa court order. >> you had to use probable cause? > yes. as has been mentioned several times today, anyone in the united states, we need a specific court order regarding that person. >> all right. mr. cole, just for purposes of explanation, if you were going -- if an f.b.i. agent

came to you for an order to preserve business records. do they need a warrant for that in a criminal investigation? >> no, they do not. you can get a grand jury subpoena, and you can acquire them with a grand jury subpoena, and you don't need to go to a court for that. >> so that is a lower legal standard to obtain information a u.s. citizen on a criminal matter? >> that is correct. >> i think this is an important point to make. the system is set up on this foreign collection -- and i argue we need this high standard because it used to be in a classified setting. you need to have this high standard. can you describe the difference? if i was doing a dribble investigation, the legal standard would be much lower if i were working on an embezzlement case in chicago than a terrorist operating overseas trying to get back

into the united states to conduct a plot? >> some of the standards may be different, but some of the things to do are great. you have to go to a fisa court and set out facts why this information is relevant to the investigation that you are doing, why it is a limited type of investigation that is allowed to be done under the statute and the rules, and then the court has to approve that ahead of time, along with all of the rules and restrictions it, how you can use you can access it, what you can do with it and who you can disseminate it to. there is a much different program that goes on in a narm algrand jury situation. you have restrictions on who you can stem nature it to under secrecy grounds, but they are much broader and the fisa grounds. >> so in total this is much more overseen -- and by the way

on a criminal embezzlement case in chicago, you wouldn't brief that to congress, would you? >> no, we would not, not as a normal course. >> so you have another layer of legislative oversight. i argue the necessity of that because it used to be a classified program of which you oversight.onal you want members of the legislature making sure we are on track that you don't necessarily need in a criminal master domestically? >> that is correct. in a normal criminal embezzlement case in chicago, you would have the f.b.i. and the justice department involved, and that's about it. in this you have the national security agency, the odni, you've got the inspectors general, the department of justice, you have the court monitoring was are doing, if there were any mistakes made, you have congress being briefed on a regular basis. there is an enormous amount of oversight in this compared to a grand jury situation.

yet the records that can be obtained are of the same kind. >> a couple of clarifying questions, mr. joyce, if you will. does china have an adversarial intelligence service directed at the united states? >> yes, they do. > do they perform economic spauge activities in the snuns >> yes. >> do they have things directed toward the intelligence services here and aprod? >> yes. >> do they target policy makers, decision makers and other policy makers that might engage in foreign affairs when it comes to the united states? >> yes. >> how would you rate them as an adversarial intelligence service given the other intelligence services that we know or adversarial, the russians, iranians and others? >> they are one of our top adversaries.

>> and you have had a string of successes in prosecutions? >> that is correct. >> and that is both domonic and military efforts. so they have been very aggressive in their activities toward the united states, is that a fair assessment? >> i think they have been very aggressive against united states interests. >> general alexander, how would you describe in an unclassified way the chinese cyberefforts capabilities to conduct attacks against the united states? >> very carefully with a lot of legal oversight. [laughter] it is public knowledge out there about the cyber activities we are seeing. but what is missing perhaps in the conversation with the

chinese is what is acceptable practices here. i think the president has started some of that in the discussions with the new president of china, and i think that is some of the stuff that we actually have to have. this need not be an adversarial relationship. our country does a lot of business with china, and we need to look at how can we improve the relations with china in such a way that both our countries benefit? we can, and i think that is good for everybody. what concerns me is that now this program and what we are talking about with china, i think we have to solve this issue with china and then look at ways to move forward. and i think we do have to have that discussion on cyber. what are the right standards. have that discussion privately and publicly. and it is not just our country, but all the countries of the

world as well as china. >> i appreciate you drawing the line, but would you say that ina engages in cybereconomic espionage to steal intellectual property in the united states? >> yes. >> to they engage in activities to steal military secrets of the united states? >> yes. >> i think this is important in we ut -- that we put it context for several things that americans want to know between he relationship of mr. snowden and where he finds himself in today. with e thing i disagree mr. litt today, that they have not seen any changes. i would ask anyone to comment.

do you believe that al qaeda elements, just historically, when issues have been disclosed, changed the way they operate to target both soldiers abroad and their terrorist plotting activities, movements, financing, weapons and training? >> to be clear, and if i wasn't, i apologize. we know they have seen this. we know they have commented on it. what we don't know is over the long-term what impact it is going to have on our collection capabilities. we know they watch us, and they modify their behavior based on what they learn. >> and we know that in some cases in certain countries, they have modified their behavior, including the way they target u.s. troops based on certain understandings of communications, is that correct? >> i think that is correct. >> i will guarantee it is absolutely correct. that is what is so concerning about this. i appreciate you being here. i know how difficult it is to come and talk.

general, did you want to say something? >> i wanted to say a couple of things. they didn't come up in the testimony. but first, thanks to the committee, administration and others. in the summer of 2009 we set up the derek trait of compliance and put some of our best people in it to ensure that what we are doing is exactly right. this committee was instrumental in setting that up. when we talk about oversight and compliance people, they think it is once in a while, but there were regular reduce actions by you and the entire committee to set that up. second, in the open press there is a discussion about pattern analysis, they are out there doing pattern analysis on this. that is absolutely incorrect. we are not authorized to go into the data, nor are we data mining or doing anything with the data other than those queries we discussed, period. we are not authorized to do it. there are no automated processes running in the

background pulling together data trying to figure out networks. the only time you can do pattern analysis is once you start the query and go forth. i have four daughters and 15 grandchildren. i can't supervise them with this database. it is not authorized, and our folks do not do it. that is some of the oversight compliance you and the rest of the committee see, but i think it is important for the american people to know that it is limited. in 2012, less than 300 celek tors were looked at, and they had an impact to helping us prevent potential terrorist attacks. they contributed. when you balance those two, that is pretty good. >> dei: appreciate it, and i -- i appreciate it. all of that information is readily provided. we meet with you regularly. we have staff at the n.s.a.

frequently. we have an open dialogue. when problems happen, we deal with them in a classified way, would y that americans be proud. i know this has been difficult to come and talk about sensitive things in a public way. in order to preserve your good work and the work of all the patriots in defending america, i felt it was pour to have a meeting where we could at least in some way discuss and reasure the level of oversight and redundancy of oversight on a program we all recognize needed a lot of care, attention and sets of eyes. i hope we have been able to do that. i do believe america has the responsibility to keep some things secret as we serve to protect this country, and i think you all do that well. the thing is we may have found

it is easier for a systems administrator to steal the information than it is for us to access the program in order to prevent a terrorist attack in the united states. we will be working more on those issues. we have had great dialogue about what is coming on some other oversight issues. thank you very much. thank you all for your service, and i wish you all well today. >> thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013]

>> here is a look at our prime time schedule on the c-span networks. start ago at 8:00 p.m., president obama nominates james comey as the new director of the f.b.i. n use, harry reid and others

discuss immigration policy. a final vote expected by july 4. and on c-span-3, they discuss the latest news out of afghanistan including security issues and the latest talks with the taliban. all of these at 8:00 p.m. eastern on the c-span networks. >> earlier today federal consumer products safety and transportation officials discussed how agencies are working to prevent child injuries. here is a portion of that event looking at car seats and safety booster seats. >> i remember when i grew up, my sisters and i, we weren't restrained in the backseat of a station wagner. i remember my sister, michelle, sitting in the front seat between my parents on the arm rest of a station wagon. she used to sit up on that person so she could see out the window better. i remember one day we were driving to visit our grandparents in west virginia

and a dog ran out in front of he car, and my dad hit the doing. my dad was a fighter pilot. he was a test pilot. my sisters and i saw this happen, and we were upset and crying, and we see the dog limp off. we were saying daddy, why didn't you stop? he said i had to make a decision between the dog and michelle, and i knew if i slammed the breaks on, that michelle would go flying through the window. i go my dad was a fighter pilot. that is something that i only understand now, being an accident investigator. that he made a decision and a choice in a split second. but today's parents dope have to make a decision between hitting a dog and saving their child. all 50 states have requirements for child passenger restraints. that's great. [applause]

can we do better? do we need to to more? absolutely. i've got three boys, 12, 10 and 7, and the state law in my state doesn't require them to stay in their booster seat until they are safe. i am the meanest mom on the block. my 10-year-old is still in a booster seat. can we do better? do we need to do more? yep. [applause] >> this was the portion of an event held earlier today. you can see the entire event tonight at 8:35 eastern on c- span three or any time online at www.c-span.org. session, was not in but members return on tuesday.

three bills are on the agenda. one aims to boost offshore drilling by directing the interior secretary to implement a leasing program that would make at least 50% of the outer continental shelf area available for leasing. also expected, a bill that implements an agreement between the u.s. and mexico that would allow oil drilling along the maritime boundary in the gulf of mexico. and agriculture spending for fiscal year 2014. follow the house live on c-span when members return next week. when you talk about transparency, you are going to give up something. you are going to be giving signals as to what our capabilities are. the more specific you get about the program, about the oversight , the more specific you get about the capabilities and the successes to data stamp your

people come a have people sitting around saying now i understand what can be done with , i willers in yemen find another way to communicate and i will keep that in mind. there's a price to be paid for that transparency. where that line is drawn in terms of identifying what our capabilities are is out of our hands. you tell us to do it one way, we will do it that way, but there's a price to be paid. this weekend, robert mueller aches his last scheduled appearance before the senate judiciary committee saturday at 10:00 a.m. eastern. on book tv, books and issues in the news. the nsa before and after 9/11. sunday at 10 :00, immigration stories. on american history tv, interviews with key white house judiciary staff about if there was compelling evidence to impeach nixon.

the timed sensed at they had come. it looks like we have a chance, because vicksburg had not been settled yet. this is may. the fact [indiscernible] maybe hitr chance to them again and free -- on free soil, when a victory that will bring the lincoln administration table.egotiating davis formed a commission that would negotiate with the lincoln government, upon a confederate victory in pennsylvania. so when lee went north, he went forth to settle it. but the 150th anniversary of the battle of gettysburg, live all day coverage, sunday, june 30, 9:30 eastern on c-span three.

span3. mitch mcconnell discussed free speech and the recent revelation that the irs has targeted conservative groups. runs one hour. >> good morning, ladies and gentlemen. good morning. the americant of enterprise institute, and i am delighted to welcome you to this address id senate minority leader mitch mcconnell. we will talk today about free speech. the rolealk up about of government and the competition of ideas in this country. the president of this institution created a new model for this institution, and it was very simple, but subversive.

it was that the competition of ideas is fundamental to a free society. when he said that, he had a view that washington or anything -- any place or you're working with ideas, you have to types of people. even you >> either you want to win or you want to shut down the competition. you're what are the other. if you want to win the competition, you are strengthening the pillars of a free society. if you want to shut it down, you are weakening the pillars of a free society. i was a view of one of our -- greatest founders. perhaps a premonition that something bad was about to happen, and the following year, it did. the following year, he learnt that the internal revenue service was on the side of shutting down the competition of ideas in this country. in 1961,john f. kennedy gave a speech about the discontented

of voices of extremism. the internal revenue service launched the ideological organization audit project. they targeted the american enterprise institute directly. as a direct result of john f. kennedy talking about the corrosive impact of ideological organizations in the war of ideas and they targeted this very institution. once again, we sue the federal government to the irs has shown that it is shutting down the competition of ideas. we are joined by one of our best friends here at aei. mitch mcconnell is a great friend to us here at aei. it is always an honor for us to welcome him here to share his thoughts and none more so than it is here today. senator mitch mcconnell.

>> good morning. i appreciate you all being here, and i want to thank you, arthur. where did you go? there aryou are. for the terrific leadership you survive here at aei, one of the most indispensable institutions in washington. arthur is a player manager in the think tank world. he not only steers the ship, he is generating some of the best research. he also has a lot of fans on the hill and it is safe to say he is a model and an inspiration to college dropouts. and disillusioned french horn players everywhere.

last june i stood here and warned of a grave and growing threat to the first amendment. that threat has not let up at all. our ability to freely engage in civic life in defense of our beliefs is still under coordinated assault from groups on the left who do not like anyone criticizing them. from a white house that appears determined to shut up anybody who disagrees with it. well- documented effort by a number of left-wing groups like media matters who harass and intimidate conservatives with the goal of scaring them off the political playing field and off of the airwaves as well. an internal media matters memo showed the extent to which these tactics have been turned into a science.

we learned of the group's plan to conduct oppositional research into the lives of on-air news personalities and other key decision-makers over at fox news, and to coordinate with partner groups to pressure the network's advertisers and shareholders by the threat of boycotts, rallies, shame, embarrassment, and other tactics on a variety of issues important to the progressive agenda. they had to make up a new name after the reagan era because the term liberal is pejorative to most americans these days. its databases can also use to remove chronically problematic media figures. chronically problematic media figures.

or to preempt programming altogether. then of course there is the widespread effort to stifle speech from within the government itself. something the obama administration has engaged in from its earliest days. some trace this back even further to the 2008 campaign, but my central point when i was here with you last june, and my central point today is the attack on speech that we've seen over the past several years were never, never limited to a few left-wing pressure groups or even to the disclose act which is been promoted in congress. they extend throughout the federal government to places like the fec, the fcc, the hhs,

and the sec, and as all americans know, even to the irs. these assaults have often been aided and abetted by allies in congress. as for the irs, i have got a phone call from a constituent last year who said he'd been subjected to extensive questioning and unreasonable deadlines from the irs. when similar complaints followed, i sent a letter to commissioner shulman asking for assurances that there was not any political targeting going on. i said public office in the irs depended on it. six weeks later i got a response from stephen miller in which he said to move along, nothing to see here. well, we know that was not the case. we now know the irs was actually

engaged in the targeted slow-walking of applications of conservatives and others who were criticizing how the government was being run. you get audited for criticizing the government is being run? it overwhelmed him with questions and paperwork and in some cases initiate audits. in one case a irs agent demanded that the board members of the iowa pro-life group sign a declaration that they would not pick it planned parenthood. and irs agent allegedly demanded that the board members of an iowa pro-life group signed a declaration that they would not picket planned parenthood. several pro-israel groups said they were singled out by the irs after clashing with the

administration over its policy on settlements. then there is the story of catherine inglebrett. she said after applying for tax exempt status for a voter integrity group, she and her husband were visited by the fbi, the atf, osha, and an affiliate of the epa. when all was said and done, osha told them that they had to cough up $25,000 in fines. the epa demanded they spent $42,000 on new sheds and three years after applying for tax exempt status, they are still awaiting approval. the list of stories like this goes on and on. now we have an administration that is desperately trying to prove that nobody at the top, nobody at the top was involved in any of this stuff, even as they hope that the media loses interest in the scandal and moves on.

but we will not move on. as serious as the irs scandal is, what we are dealing with is larger than the actions of one agency or group of employees, this administration has institutionalized the practice of picking bureaucrats against the people they should be serving and it should stop. the good news is that more people are beginning to catch on. when i warned about this last year, i got slammed by the usual suspects on the left, as you can imagine. they said i was full of it. even some of them now realize that just because mcconnell is the one pulling the long, it is not mean there is not a fire. the irs scandal has reminded people of the temptations to abuse big government and its political patrons. people are waking up to a pattern, they are connecting the dots, and they are rightly troubled.

looking back, the irs scandal helps explain a lot of the things the minister nation has done. you all are member the president wagging his finger at the supreme court. the president wagging his finger at the supreme court sitting right there in the house of representatives during the 2010 state of the union. i assure you that this piece of presidential theater was not done for the ratings. there was a good reason he spent so much time and energy denouncing the case, but it's not the reason he gave. i realize this might be shocking to some of the interns in the crowd. the fact is the court decision was actually fairly unremarkable. all it really said was that under the first amendment every corporation in america should be free to participate in the

political process, not just the ones that own television and newspapers. why should a corporation that owns television stations get a carve-out? free speech and everybody else does not. in other words, there should not be a carve-out when it comes to clinical speech who own media companies. it was a good and fair decision aimed at leveling the playing field. the real reason, the real reason the left was so concerned about citizens united is that they thought it meant more

conservatives would form social welfare organizations. groups like planned parenthood and the sierra club, for example are groups like this. what is notable is that they do not have to disclose their donors, they do not have to disclose their donors. that was the main concern of the president and his allies, they were not interested in the integrity of the process. if they were, they would've been just as upset at left-wing groups for maintaining private privacy for their donors. they really wanted was a hoax to stir outrage about conservative groups so that they could get their hands on the names of the folks who supported them. that is what this is about, they wanted to get their hooks on the names of the folks who supported groups that disagreed with the administration. and then they wanted to go after them. citizens united simply provided that hook. as a longtime political observer and first amendment hog, i knew exactly what the democrats were up to with their complaints about this decision. i have seen what the proponents of disclosure have intended and that past and it is not good

government. that is why the donor list has been protected of the socialist workers party since 1979. that is also why the supreme court told the state of alabama that it cannot force of the naacp to disclose its donor list back in 1958. the president could claim as he did six months after wagging his finger at the supreme court that the only people who do not want to disclose the truth are people with something to hide. he can claim that, but the fact is there is very good and legitimate reason that courts have protected folks from forced disclosure. they know that failing to do so subject them to the kind of harassment that we have been seeing here the last three years. the political response to citizens united with the so- called disclose act was not

about cleaning up politics, it was about finding a blunt political weapon to be used against any one group and one group only. conservatives. those who doubt this have not and paying attention to the tactics of the left. they must not have noticed the stories about top administration officials holding weekly phone calls with groups like media matters. they clearly do not know their history, and they must not have noticed the enemies list of conservative donors on the obama campaign website. or the strategic name dropping of conservative targets by the president's campaign team. these folks were talking about the koch brothers so much, you would think they were running for president.

but six months after the president rated the supreme court, he called out americans for prosperity by name. it was like sending a memo to the irs that said audit these guys. all of these things together point to a coordinated effort to stifle speech, and that is why one of the most enduring lessons in the irs scandal comes from the timeline. we now know a team of irs specialist was tasked with isolate and conservatives for scrutiny as early as march of 2010. what matters is not where they were doing it, what really matters is that it coincided with a very public campaign by the president and a small army of left-wing allies in and out of government to vilify anyone who had recently formed the group around conservative policies. what happened before this party began is just as important as what happened after the targeting began. what matters is the atmosphere, what matters is the culture of

intimidation, the culture of intimidation this president and his allies created around any person or group that spoke up for conservatism or against the direction the president wanted to take us. the so-called special interests, he said special interests would flood the political process with money that would be coming from foreign entities. the problem he said nobody knows who is behind these groups. they were shadowy, they might even be foreign controlled. these were the kinds of unsubstantiated claims the president and his allied claimed from early 2010 right up and threw the election. they were just as reckless and

preposterous as harry reid saying mitt romney had not paid taxes in 10 years. they might have been wrapped and appealing rhetoric of disclosure, but make no mistake, the goal was to win at any cost. that meant shutting off their opponents in any way they could. i don't believe the president picked up the phone and told someone at the irs to slow up these applications or audit anybody, but the truth is he did not have to. he did not have to do that. the message was clear enough. but if the message was clear the medium was also suited to the cause. growth of the public sector unions have made a pact between those who tend to benefit from the growth of government. let us face it, when elected leaders and union bosses tell us

that they should view half the american people as being a threat to democracy, it should not surprise any of us that they would look at it that way. why would we even expect a public employee whose union more or less exist to grow the government to treat someone who opposes that goal to a fair hearing. when the tea party was public vilified, is it any wonder that members of the union would get caught targeting them? this is something liberals used to worry about. fdr himself was horrified at the idea of public workers conspiring with lawmakers on how to divide up the taxpayer pie. the him it was completely incompatible with public service to the public to be cut out of a negotiation in which the two

sides are bartering over their money. even the first president of the afl-cio said it was impossible to bargain collectively with the government. that is is actually what we have today. over the past several decades, the same public employees have conspired with congress to expand those powers even more. and you endlessly increase the budgets that finance them. this is not done in the interest of serving taxpayers, it is done in the interest of policing them. because that is what happens when politicians start competing with the support of public sector unions, they stop serving the interests of people who elected them and start serving the interests of the government that they are supposed to be keeping in check. there is no better illustration than the news this week that the

congressional hearings unionized employees at the irs are about to get $70 million in bonuses. $70 million in bonuses. the irs union is thumbing its nose at the american people, it is telling them in the clearest possible terms that it does not care about the scandal or how well the government works or how well it is even serving the public. all it cares about is helping union workers get theirs. it is pure arrogance, and it reflects a sense of entitlement better suited to an aristocracy than a nation of constitutional self-government. it is increasingly appropriate to ask whose interests these public sector unions have in mind? the taxpayers? or their own? on this question, i will say that public sector unions are 50 year mistake. years ago i saw the dangerous

potential for collusion between lawmakers and public employee untions and when i served as executive of my own county. i fought hard against the formation of public-sector unions and at the time there was a bipartisan agreement on this issue. most people realized it was not in the public interest. unfortunately, the appeal of union support proved too great for some, and shortly after i was elected to the senate, they vacated my office and the dam of resistance broke. and it has been gutting the finances of every state in local government in the country. the existence of public employee unions is without question a big part of the reason people have so little trust in government these days. they are the reason so many

state and local municipalities are flat broke. they are behind public pensions. today i'm calling for a serious national debate about them. on the federal level, the first thing we should do is stop the automatic transfer of union dues from employee salaries at the taxpayers' expense. if the unions want their dues, it should be incumbent on them and not us to pay for it. the assault on free speech continues, and it is fairly an uphill battle. but if we are alert to the tactics of the left, and take these assaults one by one, i am confident that we can beat them back. let me give you a few final examples of what i'm talking about. right now there is an effort over at the federal communications commission to get groups that buy campaign ads to disclose their supporters. this is utterly, utterly irrelevant to the mission of the

fcc. and we need to say so. the sec is being pushed to display their public supporters. this proposal does not protect shareholders and it does not lead to better governance. for the left, this is not about good government or corporate governance, is about winning at all costs. even if that means shredding the first amendment, and that is why we need to be vigilant about every one of these assaults. they may seem small and isolated in the particular, but together they reflect a culture of intimidation that extends throughout the government. a culture abetted by a bureaucracy that stands to benefit from it. the moment a gang of u.s. senators started writing letters last year demanding the irs

enforce more disclosure upon conservative groups, we should have all cried foul. the moment the white house proposed a draft order replying applicants for government contracts to disclose their political affiliations, we all should call them out. when the hhs secretary told insurance companies, back during the obamacare debate, told insurance companies that they could not tell their customers how obamacare would impact them, we all should have pulled the alarm. as soon as we realized that left-wing groups were manufacturing public outcry for corporate disclosure at the sec, we should have exposed that for what it was. there might be some folks other waiting for hand signed memo from president obama to lois lerner to turn up. do not hold your breath.

what i'm saying that a campaign to use the levers of government to target conservatives and stifle speech has been in full swing and in open view for all of us to see for years. it has been carried out by the same people who say there is nothing more to the disclose act then transparency and no more to other disclosure regulations than good government. but the irs scandal puts the lie to all of the posturing. because now we know what happens when government gets its hands on this kind of information. when it is able to isolate its opponents and whether you are a pro-israel group or a tea party group in louisville, they can make your life miserable. they can force you off the political playing field which is precisely what we cannot allow.

there are a lot of important questions that remain to be answered about the irs scandal, but let's not lose sight of the larger scandal that has been right in front of us for five years. a sitting president who simply a sitting president who simply refuses to accept the fact that the public will not applaud everything that he does. this president expects the public to applaud everything that he does. my plea to you today is that you call out his attacks on the first amendment whenever you see them, regardless of the target. because the right to free speech does not exist to protect what is popular, it exists to protect what is unpopular. the moment we forget that, we are all at risk from right to left. if liberals cannot compete on a level playing field, they should make up better arguments.

what is wrong with the ompetition of ideas? if your argument is so weak that you have to try to intimidate and shut up your opponents in order to win the game? look, the only way to beat a bully is to fight back and that is all of us need to do. be wise to the way of the left and never give an inch when it comes to free speech. thank you very much. [applause] > we have time for some,, yes, yes, ma'am.

>> hi, my name is barbara from new york. is there any suspicion that intimidation goes beyond the irs and the things you mentioned. it is frightening considering that our government has things ike stun guns and star wars. >> i will not speculate where else they exist, where they already exist is pretty stunning. e have seen that at hhs. they sent out a directive to health recoveries that they cannot tell their policy holders with the impact of obamacare would do to them. this is the same secretary that is shaking them down for money in order to run television advertising supporting obamacare. then of course over the fcc obama proposed an initiative that require you a condition to

pursue what ever cause you may have to disclosure donors you are making advertisement. and then we have seen what is happening at the irs. the president himself has been demonizing these people and so the point i'm making here today is that it is not surprising that the bureaucracy would pick up on that. and think they would pick up on that and say that is what we are upposed to do. the ceo has laid out the game plan, so i don't know what my else be going on, but the things we do know are going on our right in front of us and they are beyond disturbing. leave me, if this were a republican administration and these were liberal groups that were being subjected to this kind of treatment, this would be big news on the front page of "the new york times," on a daily basis.

>> i am elizabeth regular citizen. tank you for coming and educating us. they after day, we hear a litany of corruption and abuses which should not surprise us because we know that president obama has in his mind and is determined to fundamentally change and transform america. despite what karl rove advised, is there not any of these abuses which legally rises to an impeachable offense? i'm sorry to put you on the spot, but you will not answer my e-mails. >> i think we need a thorough and complete investigation and let the facts take us where we will go. i am confident the house of representatives will have a thorough investigation, at least two committees i am aware f.

they are pursuing this and a methodical way and i don't want to jump to any conclusions, i just love the fax to take us where they take us. i am prepared to say that the resident and his political allies encouraged this kind of bureaucratic overreach by their public comments, but that is what different from saying they ordered it. i think we need to find out who is responsible and the investigation will go on for quite some time. >> hello, a couple of your colleagues have proposed a onstitutional amendment that would specify that no rights in the constitution would apply to orporations.

i'm just wondering if you could react to that and maybe discuss some of the junta point is of that would be. >> give them some points for not hiding it. the constitution has been amended very rarely in our well over 200 year history. for good reason, it has served us well. they were not uncomfortable with corporate free speech when corporations that owned newspapers or television stations were engaging in it, they only become uncomfortable ones of report said why should there be a carveout for corporations that own the media out and for no one else? t is an absurd proposal. >> what you think about the efforts of michael bloomberg to encourage democratic donors a

particular amount of votes in he senate. >> he can express himself, and i support the right for him to say hatever he wants to. i obviously, from a partisan point of view, i hope they listen to him. >> i am part of the mccain institute and i'm currently a student at the university of texas and i am wondering about this issue, it seems like they are starting to notice obama's immortality is disappearing and that he is flawed. what will it take for them to go maybe it is time to see the

light and understand that he is not all he's cracked up to be? >> i think it is keeping your eyes open and watching what is happening. simple observations. it is not surprising -- the biggest difference between the two parties today in america, they are the party of government and we are the party of the private sector. that is not that we should think there is no government at all, but they really trust the government. that is why they are in such a tight alliance with a look employee unions who are the principal benefactor of larger government and to have little or no interest in bigger and bigger ebt. to the extent that they have become skeptical, that maybe this degree of government is not such a good idea, that is an encouraging sign. one of the great things about

being young is that if your health holds up, you get older. it is amazing how your views change as you advance in age and i hope they will simply observe what is going on. this is what you get when you elect a government that believes government is the answer. and for two years they owned the place. they had a great election in 008. they can do whatever they wanted o, and they did. $300 stimulus, take over american healthcare, the student loan program, first four years of $20 deficits, they could do whatever they wanted to. the encouraging thing is that in 2010, they look to that

initiative national restraining order. my guess is they were younger voters who began to have second houghts. the president was reelected, but he did not have the kind of election he did in 2008. he did not flip the house am a change the senate much, it was status quo at the federal level. at the state level 30 out of 50 governors are now republicans. it was not a wiped out election. now we have divided government and divided government can do one of two things, they can do great things as reagan and tip o'neill did when they raised the age of social security and they did the last conference of tax reform, or even bill clinton

when he joined a republican congress and did welfare eform. what has been missing during this time of divided government from 2010 until now is a president willing to tackle the single biggest issues in country. it can only be done on a bipartisan basis, and the transcendent issue of our time is the size of our debt. what i have been waiting for with this president, i have plenty of differences with the president, he will be here for 3.5 years and what will he o? if you want to pivot and help us solve the biggest issues confronting your generation in the future, we need to try and do that, but i've not seen any evidence of it. 've not seen any evidence that

e is willing to leave this ideological place or he is put himself in for virtually all of his presidency and move in a different direction. i have wondered the field from your comment, but i think younger voters are getting more skeptical because they are atching what is happening. >> mpr had a story this week where they quoted if you left-wing organizations that said they have undergone undue scrutiny as well, that they have been asked unwanted questions. don't we want the irs to make sure that those groups are not being given tax exempt status? >> i think it will be easy to get tax-exempt status whether you are on the left or right.

i'll think the government should deny a status that should be ather easy to achieve. i am not a fan of harassing ither right or left. >> i just want to follow up on that. this claim is being made that these groups are abusing their tax status, i'm not seeing any proof of those claims. if they were not 501(c) organizations, presumably to be 527 organizations and from the standpoint of revenue collection does this make any difference for the federal government and the irs? >> none whatsoever. ood point. >> senator, you mentioned about the fact that 501(c) organizations do not have to

disclose their donors, and that is true that they do not have to disclose them publicly. i represent the national organization for marriage. donors were released by the irs illegally. the goal opponents and it is still posted on their website. would you support a legislation that they would no longer have to disclose their donors to the irs? >> i haven't thought about it. i assume you've given that case examples to the house republicans. >> yes, we asked foran investigation a year ago, but the irs will not give us a report because they are hiding behind taxpayer confidentiality and they are saying it is confidential. they will not tell us the identity of the individuals within the irs who were responsible for that isclosure.

>> my bias is in favor of as much political speech as possible with minimal amount of government interference and harassment on the left or right or anyone else. i think the last thing the american people suffer from is too little political discourse. that would be my general philosophical approach to all of these issues. there is a rational basis for groups like as not having to disclose, that is what the supreme court decision was all about. it is one thing to require disclosure when you give to a candidate or to a party, i do not oppose that. i think my voters and all of you should know who supports my campaign and my party. but these are not contributions

o candidates or parties, these are contributions to groups and sometimes that does intersect with what is going on politically because it is important to remember that only those who get elected make policy. so, a lot of issues that people want to discuss certainly do intersect with the political discussion that is going on because they might have views that are better represented by one point of view versus the other. to me, this is not a subject we should be alarmed about. that we should think is something that needs to be dealt with, i think it is something that needs to be encouraged. >> senator, --

>> i have enjoyed you over the years, norm. you have been wrong about almost everything. [laughter] i've always wondered who has eaten lunch with you over the years. -- over here? some of the worst things that have been said about me have been said by you. you have been entirely wrong on virtually every occasion i'm glad to see what is on your mind. [laughter] >> one thing we agree on is that some of the worst things that are said about me have been said by you. >> i didn't make anything up, i was quoting you directly. >> my first question is that in 2000 on "meet the press," you ave an eloquent defense on disclosure and why a little disclosure is better than a lot of disclosure. in the citizens united decision, we had eight justices including

robert scalia and alito all caps and equally full throated defense of disclosure of all sorts including shareholders knowing what their companies doing in the political front. why -- >> of course that is not accurate. they didn't say was a matter of constitutional interpretation, i am sure that if we passed it they would not strike you own. with regard to disclosure, you have to go back to the 1980's to find a time when i suggested -- hich i did and i was wrong about it -- to find a time that i suggested that disclosure of 01(c) was a good idea. i made a mistake, the supreme court left that up to congress

to decide and the democrats tried to pass the disclose act selectica the names of our critics and we want to make it difficult for them. >> let me ask one more question about 501c. the law says that they are supposed to be exclusively welfare organizations, to believe that organizing for america and america's crossroad gps are exclusively welfare organizations? >> the interpretation that the irs has had going back 40 or 50 years, i agree with. let me tell you what norm is really for. what he's really for is the government telling candidates for congress how much they can spend government mandated spending limits, and using tax money to pay for it. if norm had his way, he would push the private sector all the way out of the process of getting elected.

you would file, the government would tell you how much you could speak and spend, the government would give you the money to pay for your speech. a total government takeover of the whole process from the time you file, to the time you're sworn in. what congress is that likely to produce? the kind that was to go the government because the government would be in charge of how they got there. make no mistake, norm is a good old-fashioned far left guy. i like him, he has been wrong for as long as i can remember and it is great to see you i want to spar with you for years. [applause] >> paul from cnn, the issue of immigration tuesday, one area that the two parties are comprimising. how do you think this will sort out? >> i am not doing an immigration

press conference here. we will be on that matter for nother week or so. how about that young lady right there? >> senator, thank you so much for coming. i was wondering, just looking at mexico and how they have had political turmoil and yet they are still pushing forward a number of substantial legislation and policy they want to get accomplished, they are still able to do that even though they have had a ethical political environment. you said the president has been unwilling to negotiate and deal with the government that he is faced with. is there anyway we can work through that and the comp but some of the things he mentioned like tax reform, dealing with irs? >> i hope so. it is up to the president.

the president and our system is unique. there is only one person in america that can sign something into law and only one person who can deliver to the members of his party. the speaker and i have tried to engage the president for 4.5 years to tackle the transcendent issue of our time, unfunded liabilities and our current debt which is stunning. i think, as part of his responsibility, what i hope what he will decided to engage in a serious discussion about how to get an outcome to the biggest problem facing our country. we've not seen that yet, but i can't give up hope because he will be there 3.5 more years. we have do deal with the government we have, not the one hat we hope for.

> do you have any thoughts about reauthorizing the anthony statute so we can get some of these investigations out from under the thumb of his partnership? -- department of justice? >> i have let that happily expire in the late 90's. i don't think it's her of the country well at all and i would not be in favor of bringing it back. it was one of the post watergate eforms -- most of those have not worked out very well. i don't think going back to that would be a step in the right direction. >> hello, i am in internet freedom works and i was curious about what you are thoughts were on the nsa's overreach as far as wiretapping? how would you think it should be

addressed? do you think it needs to be eformed? >> i will confine the discussion today to things that are largely related to the subject of my speech and the independent counsel is in a way because it was part of the post-watergate reforms. any other questions on the topic that we have been talking about this morning? ow about right here? >> hello, i just wanted to -- in relation to public employee unions and your decision to have them scaled back, i just wondered if you want to comment on scott walker and how that can be translated nationally in other states? >> i think it has been a remarkable success story. i might not have this totally accurate, but roughly accurate

that once the employees in wisconsin were given the option of not paying their dues, apparently the support plummeted. meaning that the employees, when given the choice, decided that representation was not that important to them. regardless of whether you have them or not, the larger question i wanted to raisee today is the appropriateness. that's why i went back to fdr, the appropriateness of unions in the public sector because in every negotiation there is a missing person, and the missing person is the taxpayer. the negotiation is between today's public official in today's union leader reaching an

agreement to obligate the taxpayer and their future and here is no taxpayer there. believe that is why fdr, at least initially, felt that unions are entirely appropriate in the private sector. i support private-sector nionism. there is an election, a secret ballot election, winners when, and losers accept it. but it seems to be as fundamental a incompatible. if you look at the results of that, with the pension problems all across the country, virtually every state in the country is awash with pension problems. he of people that work in the government actively discouraging and bring the power of the government down on the people

who think the federal government s too big. it strikes me that this is a 50 year mistake and it is time to have a discussion again of the appropriateness of unionism in the public sector. in the private sector, find. -- fine. i don't have a problem with that. but because we are suffering the consequence is that. i will take one more uestion. >> first, an observation about norms comment earlier where he talked about social welfare. when congress set up that statue in the 50's, there is no evidence that they intended to exclude political activity. i wondered your thoughts about this. do people trying to improve

their government, couldn't that improve the social welfare in our nation? >> obviously, that is my view. i think we should be encouraging this sort of thing and not discouraging it. the whole disclosure game has nothing to do with anything other than going after your donors. it would never offended by this until the last few years when conservatives started doing more of that. all the sudden, this is a fairly recent outrage here. this is about nothing other than getting the names of your donors o you can go after them. we should be discouraging that in every way we possibly can and encouraging this kind of participation. this kind of involvement is the kind we ought to have and goodness gracious to have the government itself picking winners and losers in the game

of political speech is a true outrage. thank you for being here so much. [applause] >> here's a look at our prime time schedule of the c-span network. starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern po nomines james comey as the f.b.i. director. then on c-span the debate over the immigration policy. a final vote is expected before uly 4. on c pa the latest out of afghanistan, including the talks with the taliban. all of this at 8:00 p.m. eastern networks.an

earlier today the congressional internet caucus held an advisory committee meeting. here's a look at how the data programs are disrupting them. >> as we look at the specific cases described in hearings earlier this week, i think what we see is what seems like fairly dramatic claims, dozens of terror plots being foiled. it looks less dramatic under closer scrutiny. if you separate them out, you say 40 of these terror events, against what that is, were overseas. so they may have involved prison in some significant way, then you have 10 or 12 that are domestic. then you look at what that

means, how many were used -- specifically used this data program? the majority, we believe. ok, six or seven, then what are the cases? one involved finding someone who d been donating money to the ethiopian terror group but that's not exactly a terror plot foiled. it is not clear in that case why the same thing could not have been achieved using traditional orders.ke subpoenas and he appeared to be linked to a terror internet address, already being monitored. it is not clear why a more targeted use of that could not be possible. there was talks about a bombing the new york stock exchange.

was it is a serious plot? the director of the f.b.i. says it seemed it was serious, there was not jury trial, these people were convicted for terrorist support, meaning money, assistance. the new york stock exchange part of it involves the fact that the u.s. person involved scoped out sold over terrorist targets and did not provide very good information. it abeers to be abandoned. the u.s. attorney that worked the case says there was not plot. if these are the show piece cases they are bringing up to justify the collection of all americans' phones and possibly internet records, it is not clear that is a justification that passes. >> that was an event that held

earlier today in washington. you can see the internet event tonight at 9:00 eastern or any time online at c-span dolce & gabbana. >> in a lot of ways this is a challenging time for people who are conservatives. we have a democratic president and a quite liberal president. who has not only been elected but re-elected after putting in place ideas, programs, a and projects, that i think are very wrong headed. the public had a chance to think about that and they decided to re-elect him. it is an exciting time if you're is ng toed to --ed to modernize conservative. bring it into lines with the challenges that the country faces now. also think about how to confront the challenges in the 21st century. neither party is doing a good job of that.

there's a lot of opportunity to think about what americans in the 21st century need to change about the way it governors itself to get back to economic growth, get back to prosperity, and get a cultural revivalal we need. t is challenging but it is exciting. >> more on sunday at 8:00 on c-span's "q&a." >> first ladies have a chance to person fie if they choose. there's two things. one, they are women, real people who do things. but then there's this also econdary capacity of being a personifying figure, charismatic figure. many first ladies have been faced with this larger than life. that is something that dolly figured out. she makes the white house into a

symbol and she fosters the attackment to the creap city. in 1814, the british is going to burn the capital city and all this work she put into what they called the white house is going to pay off. it's going to give the surge of nationism around the world. >> our focus on first ladies ontinues every monday night. monday night at 9:00 eastern on c-span. >> up next a look at president obama's recent trip to europe and his meeting with g-8 leaders on issues facing the united states and the union. his is 45 minutes. host: joao vale de almeida is

the ambassador here in washington, d.c. thank you for being with us. let me begin with the g-8 summit until northern island and the debate continues here in u.s. and in europe. austerity, budget cut acts versus stimulus. you saw what happened where the stock market. are we're do you come down on that issue? guest: both sides are addressing the economy, to bring growth back. it is not easy. we are facing enormous challenges on both sides. we have different kinds of responses, different kinds of contacts in america. i think the common concern is to make sure the recovery is a sustainable one that we don't go in an up and down in terms of economic performance. i think we have established a few lines that are common. we need financial stability and

we need to increase our competitiveness. we are facing enormous challenges in emerging economies. we need to adjust our economy for training and education and we need the skills in the job market. for the moment i think the g-8 has clearly identified that. we need to join efforts at the international level to create a right position. host: what needs to happen? guest: i think we need to consolidate our accounts and put our house in order in terms of the debt and deficit. that is crucial for our credibility of our efforts. at the same time, we need to invest in a new way, we need to create the sources of competitiveness for the future. so our economies can go on creating jobs and building up marks in the world. host: this is a recent study done on a u.s./european trade

deal. 13.5% increase in u.s. income er person and 5% increase in european income if this is worked out. guest: they -- the promise of the studies are different. the starting points of the study are different. i wouldn't pay too much attention to those studies. one element is this will be good. this trade deal across the thrake will be benefitial fsh our consumers and the job market. it will create jobs and it will be good for the households. we're talk agent an increase about .5% in america, this is huge if you consider the size of our economy. it could add $160 billion to the u.s. economy.

this means, you know, dozens of thousands of jobs being created in europe and america. more investment on both sides. this is one of the responses to the crisis that we have today and we were happy to see our leaders president obama and leaders in europe agreeing with these negotiations should be very soon now. host: the e.u. followed by canada, china, then mexico and japan. the top partners to the u.s. are china, russia, switzerland. guest: together we are half of he world's wealth. together we do more than 800 million consumers. this is big. this is big. it could have an enormous potential in bringing togethers also the world economy, which

will open more market, more markets for us. a win/win project that we launched this week. it is kind of an historic week for trans-atlantic relations. we're very optimistic of what we can do. again, to deal with the issues that are the heart of the political agenda here and in europe, jobs and growth. host: from your perspective, has the euro worked out as expected? guest: i think it's a great success. if you look back at the last 10 years, we managed to keep the inflation under control. the growth pattern of our countries was very good. we brought a number of countries outside of the our row area to the core of -- euro area to the core and it was a success. some of the weaknesses of our

model were revealed, we're dealing with them. i think you can expect europe to return growth by tend of the year and hopefully, start a new positive cycle. if we link that with the trade agreement that we are about to net, you can have in a couple of years a very good context where the american economy benefits and the european economy benefits. today, i'm optimistic and positive about the prospects we have in front of us. host: over the last few decades we have followed the government margaret thatcher critics of the euro and david cameron. do you image the british will join the euro? guest: i don't think it will come in the next couple of years. we have democracy, right? joining the european union is a

free decision of people. joining the euro, again, is a decision that has to be made by each country. we have 17 countries today. next year another country will join the area. so the area is expanding because countries believe this is the est way to promote and protect their interests. the british people will have to decide. let's see how it evolves in britain but to be frank, i don't expect britain to join the euro in the next couple of years. that is clear. under the debate -- the democratic debate is there. for a moment, sometimes i, you know, hear people say britain is out of the euro -- out of the union, it is not. it is a full-fledged member in the union. they are not in the euro but they are a very important member

of the union. host: let's share comments from president obama as he finished up his meeting in ireland and headed to berlin. he spoke about thish yufe terrorism and issues in europe. here's more from the president. [video clip] >> we must move beyond the mind set of war. in america, that means we're doubling our efforts to close the prison in guantanamo. it means -- [applause] it means tightly controlling our use of technology by drones. it means balancing the pursuit of security with the protection of privacy. i'm confident that balance can be struck. i'm confident of that and i'm

confident that working with germany we can coach each other safe, while at the same time, maintaining those essential values for which we fought for. our current programs are bound by the rule of law and their are focused on threats to our security not to those of ordinary persons. they keep keep safe here in the united states and here in europe. but we must accept the challenge that all of us in democratic vernments face, to listen to the voices who disagree us with. to have an open debate about how we use our powers. host: what did you hear in that speech and did the president ease any concerns that the european community i may have had on this eves dropping, phone records issue we're dealing with

the here in the snuzz guest: i'm glad to see that president obama brought the good weather from berlin. it was an important speech and we're glad he visited berlin. it was a special speech about console darety. there were a number of issues we address on a daily basis on economic and foreign policy. but there is also societal issues. they are a subject of debate and discussion across the atlantic. sometimes we have different stopping points. on the issue of security and privacy, you recognize that sometimes in europe, we're particularly attent tive to the protection of privacy and personal data.

in this particular case, we have been seeking clarification from the american side of the aspects of your fight against terrorism, which we fully share and cooperate with. hopefully, we transparency and dialogue we will overcome difficulties in the debate. we're fully committed and share your objective of ensuring the security of our city. this is a primary goal of our political leaders as well. host: i want to follow-up on the security issue in syria. to t to remind our view join the conversation with your calls or on facebook. i want to share you the comments by president assad as quoted in "the washington post" in a germany newspaper. he says "if the europeans ship weapon, europe's backyard

comes a terror terrorists' place, and terrorists will return europe with fighting experience and extremist ideologies." guest: there's no silver bullet to figure out the syrian problem. what we're doing together, i'm happy to see how close we are working, americans and europeans is to try to find the best way out. we are insisting on a political solution, on a political process, negotiations in syria to come to a negotiated outcome. we're also very attendive to the humanitarian, which is catastrophic today. we're having the worst refugee crisis in many decades. we need tok to look at the political side and the humanitarian side.

we need to keep a number of options open. in europe, we decided not to prolong the embargo and consider the possibility on the selective basis to provide support to the opposition. we are evaluating all the options. we're discussing with our friends and we're supporting a process in geneva in talks to try to find a solution. we work on different grounds with the common aim of finding a solution for a very complex and difficult problem. host: from portugal, not far from one of our c-span callers. guest: yes, i was happy to have the conversation just a while ago. we were born, more or less, the same place in zral. host: let's get to the phone calls. the republican line. caller: good morning. since the italian supreme court

president has called for a criminal investigation of 911 scientific th the evidence that explosives were used to bring down the buildings in new york, would they be open to opening their own 911 investigation? host: we know there is a concerted effort to flood the r waves -- caller: please don't interrupt me. host: i am going to interrupt you. we had a caller call in and disputed everything that is being called on this question. we ask that you choose another network or another venue. we ask that you take your calls somewhere else. caller: i have no comments.

host: we'll go to barry in michigan. good morning. caller: yeah, it's always been a thing for the united states where you -- [unintelligible] if president obama gives weapons to the rebels who are affiliated with al qaeda that is giving weapons and aid to our enemies and, in fact, that is treason. i believe if he does this, him and any other politician who is involved in this should be tried for treason. am i right in my understanding f what treason is? guest: i don't wish to comment on internal american affairs. if you're talking about sirs ya

and the european union, we're extremely attentive to all the supplies and military support to any group in syria. we're balancing all the arguments in the way we could evently provide some support to the government. i think this is at the heart of the leaders to do the right thing, solve the problem and not add to the problem. this is very much of the discussions we have with our american friends. host: what about an idea of a no-fly zone in syria? guest: we're looking at all options and we know from past experiences in similar situations, some options work better than others. i think the military people are looking at all that. i want to return to my initial point, there is no silver bullet as far as syria is concerned. there is no magic solution that will provide all the right answers. we have to have a combination of

different solutions for it. we need a political solution at the end of the day. there has to be a negotiated outcome out of this situation. we should focus and concentrate and invest in creating the political conditions for that discussion to take place. around the g-8, there were conversations with president putin about this. he is a member of the g-8 so they had frank discussions about this issue. we support the initiatives of secretary kerry to have talks in geneva. we're working to create the best conditions for this but no easy solution for the syrian problem. host: let me have you react to two photographs. this one in "the washington post" as the g-8 leaders meeting in northern ireland.

it took place sunday, monday, and early tuesday. en there's this frath from "the new york times." you can look at the body language between the president and the rurn president putin. -- russian president putin. guest: my point is the g-8 is very important. and i was directly involved in working with that for many years. so know the kind of atmosphere you can create in a g-8 and it is unique because you have 10 leaders around the table discussing the hottest issue of the day. they can find the kind of intimate setting where discussions can be very frank. so my experience from the g-8, i was not there this time, but from the past it is maybe the

best and most intimate setting for discussions of our leaders, regardless what the photos show and reveal. in any case, it is a very good occasion to discussion things like syria or iran or any situation. host: you have to admit that relationships with russia are not at the best right now, not only happening in syria but the adoption issue, which is restricting americans to adopt russian babies. guest: i know. ur relations with russia are sometimes difficult. i can tell you they are always very colorful and we are very committed. we're very frank. some issues are difficult, as you know. we insist on a number of points that are not very comfortable for the russians.

we have a number of irtapts in our trade and relations but the political side is always there but they are a good partner. it is a neighbor of ours. it is a major partner of yours. i think we need to engage with our russian friend and try to find platforms. on iran, we need to find platforms and russia is one of the countries negligenting with iran. the russians are on board. st: so if you were doing a dictionary, and you were describing colorful, how would you define it? guest: i will let you use your imagination. host: let's go back to the

phones. good morning. caller: good morning. i was wondering how the people germany how you felt having this barrier between the president and the people. it seems to separate him from the public he was trying to address. were they comfortable? host: thank you. guest: i was not involved in the preparation and i cannot provide a specific answer to that. it was a very symbolic that he made this speech in front of the brigade. i've been to this place and it's o powerful in representing the rereconciliation of the fall of the iron curtain and the berlin wall and it is very meaningful with the president choosing to do it there. everyone understands these days

that we need to be sure that nothing really happens. we should retain the message and protect the symbolism of the count. we need to ensure prosperity and security for our people. i think it was good that the president went to europe, good that he went to berlin. we hope to see the president more often in europe because this is very -- he is very much welcome in europe and this is a powerful way of underlining trans-atlantic ties. host: as the president outlined is plan to reduce by 1/3 the u.s./russian nuclear arsenal. herself more from the president's speech, wednesday in berlin. [video clip] >> i'm announcing additional steps forward. i'm demonstratored that we can

ensure the security of america and our allies and maintain a strong and credible deterrent while deploying nuclear weapons up to 1/3. i tend to seek negotiations with russia to move beyond cold war nuclear postures. [applause] at the same time, we'll work with your nato allies to seek bold reductions in u.s. and russian tactical weapons in europe. we can forge a new international framework for peaceful nuclear power, reject the nuclear weaponization that north korea and iran may be seeking. america will host the summit in 2016 to continue our efforts to secure nuclear weapons around the world.

and call on all nations to begin negotiations on a treaty that ends the production of materials for nuclear weapons. these are steps we can take to eate a world of peace with justice. host: joao vale de almeida is the representive here in the u.s. what happens next? the president puts this on the agent da, says this is one of his goals by 2016. how does he execute that goal? guest: i think this is a very important agenda. we share the concerns about nuclear proliferation because of north korea and iran were mention bird the president. we're in full cooperation with americans on addressing these issues and many other partners as we know. this is a collective effort. this will require a collective will to achieve these goals. i think the president outlined n agent da and the reactions

are already known. all the countries in the european union are committed with this, as you know. we have to deal with our partners in host: sometimes colorful. guest: sometimes colorful. engagement is the key word. engagement in finding the right solution. but it is a very powerful positive agenda the president outlined. host: talking about the g8 summit and what happens next. new york, our line for republicans with the eu ambassador here in washington. good morning. caller: i have my own beliefs on what is going on. i have always believed the united states has always wanted to deal with one country which controls a lot of countries. with that in mind, the euro is a way of controlling countries. we had world war i, germany lost, world war ii, germany

lost. now we have the euro, and whenever a problem develops, it is germany that has the last word. as countries begin to default, germany will pick up the pieces without ever firing one shot. thank you very much. guest: i must say, i don't share that view of things. i think the european union construction over the past six years has shown that we are a powerful tool to ensure stability, peace, and prosperity. this benefits germany as much as it benefits all of the other countries. if you look back the last 60 years of history in europe, the longest period of peace on the continent ever. it has a lot to do with the fact that after the war we decided to join efforts and build a common future. we started with a common market. most of our countries, we have a single currency. we have the beginnings of a foreign policy and security policy around the world. so, member states of the

european union, the 28 -- because croatia is joining in a few weeks -- half a billion people. they realize that if they want to influence the world, if they want to have a say in the way the world is governed, they have to act together. because at the end of the day, in relative terms, all our member states are relatively small. and this is good for the u.s. the u.s. has a partner, half a billion people, 28 countries, that basically share the same principles, values, and the same strategic interests, and the u.s. can deal with us as a single partner. this is very important. germany is part of it, of course. germany is a big country. it is a central country in europe. but i totally reject the idea that this is any way at germany conspiration to achieve the power that they didn't achieve otherwise. i totally reject that idea.

germany is at the heart of the european project and contributing a lot to strengthening our construction in europe. once we overcome this difficult situation created basically by the financial crisis, you see europe coming back to growth. a stronger partner with the united states. host: british prime minister david cameron also put on the table the issue of tax evasion. can you explain how much that is costing the european economy, european jobs, and the european government? guest: at the moment, we are asking our citizens to do a lot of sacrifice in order to adjust to the impact of the financial crisis. we cannot allow a number of people to escape, a number of people to evade their tax responsibilities. so, i think this was a powerful message from the g8. very much supported and initiated by the europeans to make sure that our tax system is

fair, that everybody assumes its responsibilities in terms of taxation, and that when we ask normal citizens to make sacrifices, we should at the same time ensure that any of the people that tries to escape is sanctioned. cooperation among states is an effective one, and this is what they discussed in the g8 and what we are implementing. we are happy to see that we are on the same wavelength with the americans. host: what about switzerland? is switzerland one of those locations used as a tax haven? guest: switzerland is not part of the european union, but we have a solid relationship with switzerland. we made a number of agreements with switzerland regarding tax cooperation and we continue to

work with them and with other jurisdictions around the world in order to ensure that there is no escape for those who are not aligning themselves with the rules in terms of taxation. host: do you have a number how much it is costing the european union? guest: you can quote different numbers but it is substantial. particularly in times of crisis, you cannot allow that to happen, because otherwise how can we justify that we ask our citizens to make enormous efforts as they are making in europe to try to adapt and adjust to these situations. it is an issue of fairness, an issue of effectiveness of our tax system that we are addressing here. host: our guest is the european ambassador to the united states. anna is joining us from ohio. good morning. caller: i wanted to ask the ambassador -- last night on msnbc he had this reporter matt taibi from "the rolling stones" who did an article about the rating agencies of the banks and

how scandalous the rating systems were. i wanted to ask the ambassador do you think the european people responded more strongly in demanding accountability from banks in regard to the situations in different countries there compared to american citizens demanding accountability from the banking system and the rating agencies here in the u.s.? and i also wanted to ask him in regard to the nonproliferation would you and obama's movement toward breaking down the system or breaking down nuclear weapons, would the european union stand stronger in demanding that israel sign the nonproliferation treaty and kind

of come out into public? i know i spent a lot of time at the u.n. website reading letters and documents at that website. there are a lot of nations in that part of the world who feel threatened by israel. host: we will get a response. ambassador de almeida? guest: we should all abide by our responsibilities. there are international agreements that are to be respected. i think we will continue on both sides of the atlantic making sure that there is a level playing field in terms of responsibilities being assumed by all states of the world. i think that is the case as far as israel is concerned right now. but we are together working on those who are not respecting the agreements. you know what we are doing about iran, about north korea. and again, we support all the efforts to revive and re- energize the world effort toward

reducing nuclear arsenals and putting in place the right systems. as far as the rating agencies are concerned in the banking system, it is clear with the financial crisis in 2007, 2008 2009, and the aftershocks, the banking systems, rating agencies, all the financial agents -- the observation by public opinion. there is a lot of debate going on in europe, and i understand here as well in terms of the specific role of each of the actors and how they should behave and how they should be regulated. we have an effort around the g20, major countries in the world trying to do the same thing. i think it was quite successful in creating a new regulatory framework for banking activities but also for rating agencies. in europe, there was a particular concern about the way the rating agencies were observing and assessing our countries. the sovereign debt of our countries.

but also assessing other economic actors and the banks and the other operators. i think there is a debate here. it is difficult for me to say who is tougher. i think we are equally concerned about making sure that each actor of the financial system works under a regulated framework and assumes full responsibilities. i have seen also the reaction from the rating agencies, open to reform. different solutions on each side of the atlantic. but i think a common trend to say, we need to regulate better. we need to organize better the way the economic and financial operators intervene in the system. there are nuances that have to do with the way the public opinion reacted to it.

maybe i could say that in europe there was more acute awareness of how before the rating agencies to operate in a different way. what i see a lot of elements of convergence on both sides of the atlantic, including the way we deal with the rating agencies. host: in defining your job description, how much of your time is spent diplomatically and how much on economic issues? guest: i have been here for three years. in the first two years, i think it was mainly economic, in the sense of dealing with the aftershocks of the financial crisis, explaining to people what we are doing in europe in terms of addressing the euro area problems. now we in recent months, a lot of work being done on syria, a lot of work being done on iran and other issues of foreign policy. and more recently, a lot on trade. because we are about to launch the negotiations for the free- trade area across the atlantic. it is a major product. i dedicate quite a lot of energy with that and i want to share with you how important it is for jobs and growth in america and in europe.

so, my agenda is a very diverse one. elements of foreign policy, economic policy, and trade and investment. across the atlantic. but i have been busy but very happy to see we are progressing well in terms -- host: a quick follow-up, on the greek economy, in a word or phrase, how would you describe it today? guest: still a lot to be done. going in the right direction. still a lot of sacrifices asked from the greek people. a lot of important reforms being implemented. so, i think greece bank -- greece is on the right track, not completely out of the woods. but i want to pay respect to the efforts done by authorities, and particularly by the greek population in addressing a very

difficult situation. for greece and many countries in europe, by the end of this year, next year and the coming years, we will see a return to growth, the beginning of, we hope, a solid recovery. we believe that after this adjustment, europe will be in a much better condition than before to be more competitive to open up a world markets to address some of its structural problems, the aging of population, in a more effective way. host: richard, good morning. mount laurel, new jersey. caller: good morning, ambassador. let me apologize for the conspiracy theorists we got in this country. we seem to have that in every corner. my main question is with syria. back when the u.n. condemned that and the security council -- namely russia and china -- went

against it, i haven't heard anything else about that. at one time i heard that the arab league was going to do something. it seems to go by the wayside. i was wondering if maybe there is a different perspective from someone else -- another country that voted for that, what their opinion was or if anything also is being done. host: thanks for the call, richard. guest: a lot is being done to try to address the syrian problem, as i explained earlier. the arab league plays a role. other regional organizations play a role. we of the european union, we have been very active. our european foreign minister is in the region right now in close contact with secretary kerry. all of the ministers are fully mobilized toward trying to find the solution. the issue was discussed in the g-8, particularly with president putin. other arab countries are

involved, obviously turkey is involved. there is a mobilization of the community to try to find a solution to the syrian problem. again, not easy. no silver bullet. no magic solution is available. we need to assess all the options we have. i think we given ourselves the flexibility to maneuver to consider all of the options. a decision in europe not to prolong the arms embargo. look of the decisions taken by president obama a few days ago in terms of support of the opposition. look at our common efforts to energize the geneva negotiations and bringing all of the actors onboard. and at the same time, dealing with an extremely difficult humanitarian situation. you know, on our side in the european union, we provided more than $1.5 billion in the region to address the refugee problem and the humanitarian problems.

it may be the biggest refugee crisis in many decades that has been created in that region. and we cannot forget the regional dimension of the situation in syria. there are a lot of actors involved and we need to keep an eye on the big picture in order to understand what happens in the country. host: up until now, in excess of 90,000. guest: the most serious and difficult foreign policy we have to address today. no one has the silver bullet. no one has the solution. all of us need to contribute to find the right conditions. host: joan, eastlake, ohio. you are next. caller: my question is basically most of the problems in the world i think, can be solved by jobs. i know the g-8 are trying to create more jobs worldwide. i feel if people are working -- really working and have good paying jobs, they are not going to be going to war.

it is an oversimplification, but in a lot of these countries, there is so much damage from the wars, you know. let's put down our arms, let's give them the money to rebuild their cities, rebuild the countries, build infrastructure in our own country. i admire germany because they have been so wonderful at creating jobs and keeping the economy going. they are a good example for the rest of the world, but how can all of the g-8 leaders really focus on jobs? because i feel if you give people good jobs and a good education, of course, two, then problems could be solved. what do you think? guest: i absolutely agree there is an economic dimension for these problems we have been discussing here this morning. if you look at the middle east, if you look at the southern mediterranean, if you look at all the countries that were involved in the so-called arab spring, you have very difficult economic situations. you have high levels of youth unemployment. so, you need economic growth.

economic growth and economic opportunities, jobs, are part of the solution for this intricate diplomatic and political problems. our strategy to this region is also at the same time diplomatic, diplomatic efforts, political efforts and dialogue, but at the same time creating the conditions for job creation and economic growth. we are supporting the economies, we are promoting reforms that eventually will mean that bad economic situations will concentrate people's minds in prosperity instead of situations like the one today. how can we contribute to that? americans and europeans, by assisting and providing help and supporting reforms in these countries. but also putting our own house in order in our economies and --rking together across this

the atlantic to promote world growth. this is what we are doing right now with the free trade area agreement, another contribution to reenergizing the world economy, creating more opportunities for other countries as well, opening up the markets around the world. so, i greet -- i agree with you there is a strong economic dimension to this economic and foreign policy problems. jobs can do wonders in terms of creating new situations and more positive scenarios for countries like the ones we are dealing with this morning. host: finally, how long will you stay in your current position as europe's ambassador in washington? guest: about another year or so, i would expect. still a lot to do. i am very hopeful we can make progress. i am very optimistic about it. at the end of the day, americans and europeans have a lot in common.

values, tradition, history, backgrounds, languages, tradition. we also have strategic interests. we both are industrialized countries facing a number of challenges. and we believe that if we join hands, if we work more together and i am here to contribute modestly to that -- we can find a better solutions to our problems, domestically and for our capacity to influence what happens in the world. i am optimistic. i have another year or so to continue my job. and i am looking forward to good results. host: ambassador joao vale de almeida, eu ambassador to the u.s., thank you for stopping by. look at the a federal reserve plans for a stimulus program with anthony sanders of george mason. in a discussion on issues important to young americans, including student loan interest rates. egal.e joined by matthew siega

we will talk with the national technology reporter. plus your e-mails and phone calls. live saturday at 7:00 eastern on c-span. here is a look at our schedule. starting at 8:00 on c-span, president obama nominates james comey as the fbi director. immigration policy which the senate will continue to debate with a final passage debate before july n3, the latest

on afghanistan. all this tonight on the c-span networks. >> when you talk about transparency, you are going to give up something. you will give signals to adversaries. the more specific you get about programs and about the oversight , the more specific you get about the capabilities and the successes to that extent. you have people sitting around saying now i understand what can be done with our numbers in yemen and in the united states, and i will find another way to communicate and i will keep that in mind. there is a price to be paid for that transparency. ofd a line is drawn in terms what our capabilities are, is out of our hands. you tell us to do it one way, we will do it away, but there is a price to be for that transparency. >> robert mueller makes his last scheduled appearance before the

senate judiciary committee saturday at 10:00 a.m. eastern. and issues inoks the news. and sunday at 10:00, immigration stories. on american history tv, interviews with key judiciary staff investigating whether there were grounds to impeach nixon, sunday at 3:00. " washingtonto journal." this is 40 minutes. >> let's begin with sudeep reddy from "the wall street journal" with the question that will really drive the situation, which is what creates employment and the country. guest: if you look at the economy overall, at the core there is a question of demand. if businesses are seeing demand from people across the country, then they will hire workers and add to their employment and perhaps even raise wages over

time as demand comes in. and if those workers are doing well and those companies, than those workers might well go out and spend their money somewhere else, perhaps spend it at a faster pace, and that will lead other businesses to higher of the workers. eventually you have a self- sustaining cycle in the economy, especially in a recovery where one leads to another and the economy picks up, employment picks up, and everything gets a lot better and the unemployment rate comes down. and of course, when you are in trouble, as a recession approaches, you have the opposite occurring where people pull back, businesses pull back, and start to cut jobs. host: let me follow up on this chart that sudeep reddy was talking about. millions leaving jobs every

month through separation in retirement. a relatively small change in the levels is essentially what makes implement go up and down. since the recession has begun to end, job openings are increasing, hires are climbing slowly, but there are also increasing slowly and the layoffs have returned in some sectors to these previous session levels. guest: yes, all of these things are an indication that the labor market is just moving very slowly right now. if you look simply at hires, there is a lot of hiring going on. you can see in this chart, over 4.4 million hires in april. april is the most current month for which we have data. 12.4 million hires against 11.7 million unemployed -- you would think the problem should solve itself quickly good look at all the people we are hiring.

but if you -- if you could go to the next slide, i am sorry. where you see the separation component added, now you get to see what is going on. there is a different here. when you've got 4.4 million hires but only 4.3 million separations, then that is a very small net increase and that is what we are seeing, very small net increase in in unemployment. if i could return to the previous slide, you could see what is happening with hires and my apologies. this is set up to show you the first column showing the peak of hires. not just the business cycle but the peak of the hires data series, november 2006. by the time the recession started in 2007, they have already dropped somewhat. but they fell much further by the end of the recession, by june of 2009. you can see they have recovered but they only gained back about 800,000 of what they lost. we are still at 1.1 million

short of the november peak, november of 2006. so, that is what is happening here. hires are coming back, but not very quickly. host: based on that, the jolt report, job openings and labor turnover, how important is the information on a weekly basis on the monthly jobs report interview businesses looking to expand, contract, and what it means for those on the unemployment line? guest: the labor department gives us a lot of data about where we are in the course of the recovery. that is why it is so important to watch these closely, whether they are weekly figures on jobless claims, how many people may have been laid off when they were looking for unemployment benefits, or the monthly figures we see. and we hear a lot about, the first friday in the month, when the monthly employment report comes out with the unemployment rate and payroll figures. what we get in those reports, we get a lot of data.

what we pay attention to the most are the headline figures -- how many jobs employers added over the course of the month, where did the unemployment rate move to. what we often don't see is what is happening under the surface. that is why the figures in jolt are so important because you can get a little under the surface and find out how many job openings there are across the country, how many workers there are per job opening and really how the momentum is shifting in the labor market. what you can see in these numbers are the remarkable changes, turning points in the economy. it gives us a little bit of a better sense of the health of the labor market. we are obviously struggling still right now four years in the recovery to see a truly strong labor market. but we have a fair number of signs of progress, which is important. it's so do these numbers et al.

host: do these account for what are called the frustrated workers, those who have stopped looking? guest: in the survey we do not differentiate why people left a job. once people are in a state of unemployment we are not tracking them in the job openings and labor turnover survey because we are an establishment survey. if they are not connected to an establishment, we can't survey them. we capture when they separate from a job that we cannot really track them much after that. the bureau has other programs that do, but not this program. what we do is we can break out separations, at least in one way. people who left their jobs voluntarily versus people who involuntarily. aired host: host: host: based on that, explain this chart. guest: ok, this is a breakout of the total separations. the light on the bottom, the yellow, total for the month of april. about 4.3 million. most of those were quits, the red line, 2.2 million. over half of the total

separations were people who voluntarily leave their jobs. 1.6 million, 1.7 million. about 38% of the separations. the rest are residual category that would call other separations which includes retirement, death, disability, things like that that did not fit easily into either category. this shows you that even though times are not particularly good right now on the labor market, there are still more people voluntarily leaving their jobs than being laid off. host: we will get to your calls and comments in a moment. but sudeep reddy, one of your colleagues asking this question to chairman ben bernanke when he held his quarterly news conference following the latest information from the fed, that the quantitative easing program will slow down either late this year or early next year, causing a steep selloff on wall street. the question on the state of the economy and the job after and the fed chairman on wednesday. [video clip] >> it is the case the fed overestimated the growth rate,

very often in the past in this recovery. we have gone through a period and the first half of the year with pretty subdued growth. i would like to hear you explain where this optimism comes from and how confident you are that these expectations are going to be met. >> the fundamentals look a little better to us. in particular, the housing sector that has been a drag on growth since the crisis is now a support to growth. it is not only creating construction jobs, but as house prices rise, increased household wealth, support consumption spending, consumer sentiment. state and local governments, which have been a major drag, are now coming to a position where they no longer have to lay off large numbers of workers. generally speaking, financial conditions are improving. the main headwind to growth this

year is, as you know, the federal fiscal policy which the cbo estimated something in the order of 1.5% of growth, and our judgment is that given that very heavy headwind, the fact that our economy is still moving ahead, at least at a moderate pace, is indicative that the underlying factors are improving. and so, we will see how that evolves. obviously we have not seen the full effect yet of the fiscal policy changes. we want to see how they evolve as we get through the fiscal impact. host: fed chairman this past week. sudeep reddy, based on the jobs market, what did you hear from him? guest: what the fed chairman is trying to do as he sets policy with his colleagues on the federal reserve is trying to understand where we are in the cycle of the labor market. that is what ultimately determines whether the fed is going to raise interest rates over time or more immediately

pull back on the bond-buying program designed to spur the economy. he is watching not only the monthly report we see across economic data but also try to get under the surface with reports like jolt's to understand what is happening underneath. he is fairly optimistic right now, for the reasons he outlined. what he is ultimately looking for, though, is to see that people are getting jobs, that the unemployment rate is coming down, that the labor market is improving overall. and that he is watching all of this to see whether that occurs. the core of the question he faces there is the fact that the fed has been too optimistic over the last couple of years expecting a faster recovery, self-sustaining, and with almost 12 million people still unemployed, even more who quit looking for work, it is clear that he still has a long way to go, and that is probably best

part of the challenge he faces. host: john wohlford, he brought up the issue of construction hiring the best part thing to different picture. constructions hires are up slightly since 2009 but down significantly from where we were in 2007 or 2005. guest: it shows the construction hiring has not recovered. we were down 154,000 before the recession even started from the peak. but only risen 20,000 since the recession. construction hiring is just very flat. host: conway, new hampshire. good morning. caller: i have a possible solution to two work concerns and when i am done speaking and connecting these two concerns, i have a possible exciting solution. the first concern is immigration and america's need for people to

do the hard work harvesting our crops. the second concern is young americans finding jobs and after higher education having large debts. if or when the 11 million immigrants become legal citizens, they will likely see different types of work than working in the field and parents will work hard to give their children better lives, and most likely their children will not be working picking crops. then we will need to find another million people to do the hard agricultural work. then we have students at tech, junior colleges, technical colleges needing jobs. if hired by the farm owners or corporations to harvest the crop they will be paid by the farm

businesses and so forth. but here is the exciting part. in addition for doing this needed work and the young people have lots of energy, in addition our government would pay some of their higher education. if they worked one summer doing this difficult work, they would get one semester free tuition paid for by the government. host: let me stop you there. i think we got the essence of your point. guest: certainly a creative response. it gets to the two core issues getting a lot of attention on capitol hill. obviously immigration is being debated at the very moment. to deal with that kind of problem, making sure there are enough workers who are willing to do that work and perhaps do some other work that other people are not willing to do. one of the underlying issues in the labor market, how many job openings do we have that are not being filled. in some cases, those are at the

high end. advanced workers, high-tech, and in some cases it may be the low end, people who might not be willing to go and work out in the field or in a harder labor job. on the other part, student loans and student debt is another issue getting some attention. it is going to be very difficult to link those two. as you have seen over the years, congress has not succeeded in doing a lot, so you probably will not find them, together and finding a comprehensive solution to link these two issues. we can only hope they address each of them in some form separately. host: if you are interested, on her facebook website, there is a chart that looks at job openings and also the employment picture. this is what it looks like from 2004, and the essential roller coaster based on the recession and economic recovery. we are turning back to where we were back in 2005, 2006. it is available online at

facebook.com/c-span. spring, texas. how long have you been out of work? caller: my name is luanna. i have been unemployed for two years every month from an institution well renowned renowned here in houston, texas. job separation. a whole department of 60 people went down to five people. within the hospital, they had tons and tons of jobs in the same field. they did not re-recruit those people into those jobs. some of those jobs two years and three months later are still open. they would have preferred paying me the unemployment money than to pay me the salary. now, i am looking for jobs within the same field and willing to take a cut of $10,000, which is a big-time cut. and the reason why i am willing to take that cut is because i

have a child in college with that kind of cost that we are not getting all of the college financial aid benefits at all. host: let's use your point in talk about what she and others are facing. unemployed persons per job opening. guest: this is a measure that gives you a picture of how things are going in the job market in terms of how competitive it is for the unemployed. each person's situation is different. everyone has their own skill set and everyone has different requirements, people live in different parts of the country. this is sort of a broad brush. for the top level. does not really apply to each individual. what if you compare the number of unemployed, basically divided by the number of job openings, you end up with this ratio. you can look at it as the number of people competing for each available job -- the number of unemployed people, that is.

you can see the beginning of january in 2007, we were at 1 1/2 persons or job opening. coming out of the recession, you have over a 6 1/2 persons per job opening. a lot more competitive, a lot more difficult when there are that many more people you are trying compete with for a job. we have made progress, unemployment has gone down and job openings have come up, so that has brought the number down and at april we were at 3.1. you can see, there have been significant improvements since the end of the recession but still more competitive than it was prior to the recession. guest: one of the reasons we love looking at data like this is it tells a story underneath that you would not necessarily think of from the numbers. if you imagine what conditions

were like in january of 2007 when people were able to get jobs, it was much easier to get a raise, much easier to move up in the job. more competition that employers faced in finding workers. as the recession struck and as we went into the downturn, you can see that chart really go crazy. people are all looking for work. it is why we see in some occupations, wages coming down, and that is why even today, when you have three people unemployed per job opening, it is still very difficult to get a wage increase. it is still difficult to move around on a job and feel completely confident that you are making the right decision. that is one reason why we have had such a slow period of growth in the economy, because there is still that much slack in the labor market and you cannot generate a self-sustaining recovery this way. host: comments, first from our facebook page --

host: from our twitter page there is this -- should housing be the result of growth and not drive it? wasn't that one of the reasons we got into trouble before? justin is joining us from brooklyn, maryland. caller: how are you? host: how long have you been out of work? caller: since january. host: what did you do? caller: i was [indiscernible] host: your question or comment. caller: [inaudible] i have seen job hiring signs all the time no matter where i look

and i see people homeless -- host: the connection was not clear but he basically said there were hiring signs but yet still those out of work and homeless. host: there certainly are, and that is obviously the problem we're facing right now the labor market. the economy is improving, just slowly. that is why you are not seeing everyone who wants to get a job get a job. we still have too many people looking for work for the available positions. somehow we need employers to create more jobs. that is obviously the big question of the recovery, what drives job creation and what is the spark that will get us out of this period of slow growth. we have not been able to find an answer to that. we found a lot of explanations so far of what might be holding employers that, whether consumers who are constrained by

weak credit or events abroad in europe or china, holding back demand for companies that export, or could be conditions in the united states that our lawmakers have created, whether through regulation or fiscal policy or some of the other constraints. host: john wohlford, let's look at white-collar, professional and business service hires. may of 2006, 7 years ago. the most recent figures, the spring of 2013. guest: what we have seen in professional business services is it tends to lead some of the other industries, tends to move first in one direction or another. host: why is that? guest: one reason is because temporary help with included in this industry. employers can use temporary help workers, for instance, in a recovery rather than bringing on permanent full-time people. they can start with the temporary help until they have more confidence the recovery will continue.

we see in this slide that professional business services did fall apart in the recession but it continued to fall through the end of the recession. it has now exceeded the period immediately before the recession. we actually recovered by about 20,000, hires are definitely higher. host: how long have you been out of work, tom? caller: i dropped out of the workforce because of a previous recession back in 2000. i've managed to stumble through until now. i believe mr. john wohlford's statistics are perfect, that they are not being cooked. we are back to normal, everyone should be happy.

and all i can say is, i was in i.t. and i was getting paid more than $100,000 a year. i was working on mainframe computers. i know it is old, antiquated technology, but it is underlying all the data processing that is out there now. this is just my story. i will get through it in about one moment. and there is a little warning. for anyone going into technology, if you can do something in indiana, you can do it cheaper in india. it is not just a knock on india. everything is being outsourced. if you can do it on a computer, it goes elsewhere. i am out of work. i am 62. i am scraping by. trying to have my social security rise a little bit. times are tough. i would work for free for a month for anyone who would give me a chance, that used to pay me

100,000 and 130,000 a year i'm a i would work for free to prove to them i still have a brain in my head and i can do the work. nobody's interested. part of it is age, part is the economy. this stuff is not being captured in all of the statistics. host: thank you for the call. sudeep reddy? guest: a lot of very important points. to defend the statistics, they do what they are designed to do, which is to tell us a certain picture of the labor market or any part of the economy when we are looking for that specific theater. they cannot actually get down into the details of everyone's individual circumstances and stories. but you actually got at a very important point, technology in particular. we have seen over the last two decades of such an amazing transformation in technology and what technology is able to do for society that we had not really imagined. that is a central problem of the labor market. training, preventing proper

skills for workers that we have not quite come to grips with a because that is changing so quickly. we are often finding people over the course of their lifetime are having to change roles may be several times to be able to meet that job in that technology field. obviously there is a larger problem. some people call it skills mismatch, some people just say it is a factor of needing to have a more mobile labor force. there are a lot of jobs right now in north dakota, obviously, and a lot of people are moving to north dakota for jobs like that. there are not as many jobs in california. certainly improving, but that is one of the issues we are facing in our country and other regions in the world are facing it. how do you get people to move to where the jobs are and create a more dynamic labor market that way? host: one of our viewers put it this way. stop the automation. robots are taking u.s. jobs. from our facebook page --

guest: that is true. and are crawling along at the replacement level. what --know with only temporary help managers just in the mix.

they do not need benefits. measuree do not benefits. that is my understanding. it comes from reading and things like that. is what we are seeing with hires and temporary help. they are in an industry that has is easierthe cause it and safer for employers to start with emperor people. kalvin from georgia. this is a look at higher switch in 2006.00 it is dropping off to 431,000. kalvin, good morning. i have a number of questions. thing that is standing out

of my mind. how did we get in the position we are in now? . we have think tanks, history to show us the mistake that was made in the past. how can we make the same stakes in the future? how is this possible? such a gripa takes that we lost so many jobs question mark --? guest: one of the things we struggle with is understanding what has changed in the economy in the labor market. to adjust to. it is a different economy today than it was in the early 1990's embarked on nafta. of a fast- nature moving society and fast-changing

society. oakland, california. how long have you been out of work? caller: five years. what i'm not hearing on television, i watch you guys all-time great i do not here are the black people. they are an invisible race. before 1865, we are one percent employee. -- we were 100% employee. i do construction -- i will wash dishes and picking grapes or anything. what i noticed is they hire a lot of mexicans in restaurants

and they -- or hire people so when it is time for a black man to come in, who is interviewing you? a mexican guy. who is working? a mexican guy. all the hotels. they are not just picking great anymore. they are making good money in construction and masonry and they are only hiring their own people. where does the black man and woman get a chance to get a job today? and they're trying to get these illegals permanently over here. what do we do? host: thanks for the call. let me take this point to the immigration debate we are seeing in washington. guest: the core of the debate is around what role should immigrants play and our society. one of the reasons it is so contentious is the point we just heard. there are a lot of people who are looking for work right now. there are a lot of people who have been struggling for years and years to find work. and we seem to have a problem in matching the people who are finding work into those jobs. whether it is because of skills, not having the right skills, or just not being aware of the opportunities that are available. the immigration debate is in part a longer-term discussion about what we are going to need five years from now or 10 years from now once the economy has improved a lot better than it has this point.

so that is part of what we are facing. but you can see this -- and some of this is in the data and some you hear anecdotally. employers at the high end are not able to find exactly who they need, and we need to sometimes drill down and understand, is it because the people who are here home might have been trained in a technology jobs are not trained properly for that role, or is it an employer just looking for cheaper workers, looking to pay less than they would have to pay otherwise to attract somebody who is here? that is one of the reasons it is such a sensitive and contentious issue. host: this next graph is called host: this next graph is called quits -- can you explain? guest: it gives you an idea of the performance of quits because employers and employees both are making these decisions. if someone is employed, they chose to be employed and they are employed because their

employer chose them and is making the decision. a quit in the voluntary exit, a breaking of the employment relationship. we can see that quits during the recession fell substantially. the interesting thing here is it really has not come back that well. people, when they are not confident they can better the situation by getting another job, they are more likely to hang onto the job they have. that is what they're doing now. people are not quitting, and that in turn slows down hiring because you can hire for two reasons -- either to increase your payroll or you can hire to replace people who left. and if you are not having any people leave through quitting, then that takes away a big chunk of the incentive to hire. host: dover, florida. as we look at america by the numbers. today, the jobs picture in the u.s. good morning, welcome to the program. caller: i have the perfect answer to all of our problems. i am 81 years old. i was born in 1932.

my father had a fourth-grade education and my mother had an eighth-grade education. several years they had to migrate to work on the farms because that is all there was to do. i graduated from high school in 1950 and went to work at a bank, which you could not do now. i was 18 when we got a commode in a house. i know what it is to live in a third-world country. and in 1960, the government decided, some of the liberals,

that people who were not educated did not have to work in the field, or the houses, the nasty jobs. so, they say you don't have to do those jobs, you can just draw welfare and live better than your counterparts who are trying i mean, it is absolutely crazy. i have seen all of this. my husband was a schoolteacher and then became a principal. he was in ruskin, florida, if you ever heard of ruskin tomatoes. these immigrants came in. in the 1960's, they came here not wanting all of the handouts. they were good people. he worked with them. of course, welfare had already set in. well, the people that came, the mexicans that came, they were not accepting anything, but the government came in and convinced them they didn't have to take and live like that. see, what has happened is the government works so hard to keep itself in business that it's

just causing all of these problems. host: thanks for the call from florida. we obviously could spend an hour just on that very topic. did you want to summarize did you want to summarize that? guest: absolutely. first of all, to be fair, there are tens of millions of people in the country working backbreaking and gut wrenching jobs, working very hard in difficult conditions. so we have to be fair to people who actually are stepping out into those roles because a very large number of americans are doing that, both immigrants and people whose families have been here for decades. but there is a broader issue here. obviously there has been quite a bit of debate, not only recently throughout this recession and recovery, but even in the 1990's about what is the role of governments and government benefits in our economy. this was certainly an issue in the mid-1990's when welfare was overhauled. and it is probably going to be a continuing issue now, given there are so many people who

struggled in this recovery to find jobs and are really surviving because of government benefits. there are people who are on government benefits, not taking in a whole lot of money but it is important to their lives and we have to figure out to what extent we adjust those as we come out of this slow recovery. host: we have a minute or two left. jerry, a quick question from chester, virginia. you are out of work? caller: yes. good morning. yes, i have been out of work since january of 2008, but most of that time i have been sick. i have chronic ailments. my question is to the gentlemen, i heard on some of these like "the ed show" that 66% of the new hires of these new jobs created are low-wage jobs that are maybe $12 or $13 and less. host: john wohlford, can you it is true that the jobs

, professional business services, that includes temporary help. that had the two largest number of job openings in april. yes, there is some truth to that. gentlemen, thank you for being with us as we look at america by the numbers and the employment picture in the u.s. >> tomorrow a look at the federal reserve's plans. then a discussion on issues important to young americans, including youth unemployment. al.are joined by matthew seg

photoofficials use a database of one hundred 20 million people to identify suspects in criminal investigations. we will talk to a national technology reporter. plus e-mails and tweets. live,ington journal," saturday, on c-span. tonight on c-span, president obama nominates james comey as fbi director. later, discussion of nsa data collection programs and technology and privacy laws. today, president obama nominated as the next director of the fbi. he served as deputy attorney general